The teenager Was Ethel The ruthless

who wowed Rosenberg architect of

Wimbledon innocent? the Iraq War
SPORT P22 LAST WORD P44 OBITUARIES P37

THE WEEK
10 JULY 2021 | ISSUE 1339 | £3.99 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Taking off the masks

Johnson’s Covid gamble
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4 NEWS The main stories…
What happened What the editorials said
The great reopening “Our long crawl to freedom is almost over,” said The Sun.
The easing of rules is being resisted by the usual band of
Boris Johnson declared his intention this opportunists and “hysterics”, but what do
week to push ahead with the lifting of these people want? “Another year of this
almost all Covid restrictions in England on purgatory?” It’s true that Covid cases are
19 July. The plan – which will be signed off rising and that this will lead to some deaths,
on Monday unless there is a dramatic but we “accept 40 or so daily flu deaths in
worsening in the data – will end mandatory an average year” without locking the country
mask-wearing and limits on indoor down. Now that the risk to the NHS has
gatherings, along with working-from-home abated, there’s no justification for continued
guidelines and the school “bubble” system. curbs on people’s liberties, said The Daily
Nightclubs will be able to reopen, and pubs, Telegraph. It’s high time we got rid of them.
theatres and sporting venues will be able to
operate at full capacity. The pandemic was On the contrary, the lifting of the rules
Mandatory mask-wearing will end
“far from over”, said the PM, but it was “feels excessive and rushed”, said The
time to end “government by diktat”, and Independent. The strategy is based on the
trust people to make their own informed decisions. If we don’t premise that the vaccination campaign has erected a “wall of
unlock society now, in summer, he said, when will we ever? defence” against the consequences of rising infections. Yet the
wall has a gaping hole in it: large numbers of younger people
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, acknowledged that new still haven’t received even one jab. Why not wait for a couple
Covid cases could double to 50,000 a day by 19 July, and of months until we finish the job? The decision to scrap the
reach 100,000 a day later on in the summer. But he said mask requirement is “particularly baffling”, said The
vaccinations would prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. Guardian. Face coverings are a minor inconvenience and
Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the Government of being highly effective. “Israel, much better vaccinated than the UK,
“reckless” and backed union calls for mask-wearing to remain was forced to restore its mask mandate only days after
compulsory in enclosed spaces and on public transport. dropping it, as cases rose.”

What happened What the editorials said

A Labour victory
Defying the polls, Labour scraped to an
unexpected by-election victory in the West
Yorkshire seat of Batley and Spen last week
– a major boost to the party’s flagging
fortunes. But though it held on to the seat,
its majority was slashed to just 323, down
from 3,525 in 2019. The winning candidate,
Kim Leadbeater, now represents the
constituency once held by her sister Jo
Cox, who in 2016 was murdered by a
white supremacist while on her way to meet Starmer and Leadbeater
constituents. Leadbeater took 35% of the
vote, just one point ahead of her Conservative rival. Labour
leader Keir Starmer hailed the result as “a turning point”.
The election – triggered by the resignation of the
constituency’s former MP to become the first elected mayor
of West Yorkshire – was marred by accusations of dirty
tricks. Most were levelled at former Labour MP George
Galloway, standing for the Workers Party of Britain, who
took third place with almost 22% of the vote.
Labour’s win gives Starmer a badly needed reprieve, said The
Times. His party is still reeling from its by-election defeat at
Hartlepool in May; a second Tory triumph
would have “knocked another big hole in
Labour’s red wall” and raised more questions
about his leadership. Not that he’s in the clear
yet, said The Guardian. Labour owed its win
more to the “energy” and “charisma” of its
candidate than to Starmer. Indeed, recent
polls suggest that 59% of voters feel he is
doing a bad job as leader. Until Starmer
comes up with a clear plan for the party, the
idea that he can win back voters will remain
“wishful thinking”.
Starmer also needs to ditch the dubious tactics Labour used
in this by-election, said The Daily Telegraph. It wasn’t just
Galloway who sought to win over Batley and Spen’s large
Muslim population by stoking “sectarian tensions”. Labour
did it, too. One leaflet pictured Boris Johnson with the Hindu
nationalist Indian PM Narendra Modi, and warned: “Don’t
risk a Tory PM who is not on your side.” How does that
square with the high moral tone Starmer adopts in Parliament?

It wasn’t all bad An American woman who

The Queen has awarded the
George Cross – Britain’s highest
civilian award for gallantry – to
the NHS, to mark its 73rd
birthday. Her Majesty said the
award recognises the “courage
compassion and dedication” of
was rejected by Nasa in
Scientists have recruited a new
partner in the war against
the 1960s on account of plastic waste: mussels. The
her gender is finally going marine creatures feed by
into space, aged 82. Wally filtering seawater, digesting
Funk trained with the tiny particles of nutrients and
Women in Space flushing the rest through their
programme in 1961 – but it systems. Now, a team at
was cancelled before she Plymouth Marine Laboratory
© INSTAGRAM BLUE ORIGIN/JEFF BEZOS

NHS staff “over seven decades,
and especially in recent times”.
It is only the third time the
George Cross (which is awarded
on the advice of the PM and a
committee) has been given to a
non-individual: Malta won it in
1942, for its wartime courage;
the RUC in 1999.
THE WEEK 10 July 2021
could join Nasa. Later, she has run trials to see if they can
became the first female do the same for micro-plastics.
flight instructor at a US Their findings suggest that 300
military base. Her test mussels can filter out 250,000
scores were excellent, but shards of microplastic each
Nasa still wouldn’t accept her. Now, though, Amazon billionaire hour. They calculate that if
Jeff Bezos has invited her to be his guest of honour on his first deployed to estuaries, they
space flight, on 20 July. “No one has waited longer,” he said, on could filter up to 25% of
Instagram. “Welcome to the crew, Wally.” waterborne particles.
COVER CARTOON: NEIL DAVIES
 …and how they were covered NEWS 5
What the commentators said What next?
It was hard to follow the logic of Johnson’s announcement this week, said Robert Hutton on As of 16 August, fully
TheCritic.co.uk. The PM gravely declared that the pandemic was still very much with us and vaccinated people in England
that cases were increasing fast – but then confirmed that he was going to help cases increase will no longer have to self-
even faster by scrapping social distancing rules. He then advised the public not to “get demob isolate if a close contact tests
happy” and to keep wearing masks in crowded situations. His message, in short, was: “it’s not positive for Covid. The same
over, but you can act as if it is, but you shouldn’t”. Don’t bother looking for sense in the PM’s will also apply to under-18s.
Covid stance, said Elliot Chappell on LabourList.org. It has little to do with public health and Some have urged the
everything to do with appeasing those restive Tory backbenchers who cried “hallelujah” in the Government to bring that
Commons at the news of the lifting of restrictions. date forward, warning that
with the number of new
Opening up the country as it’s riding a huge new wave of infections does seem counterintuitive, infections rising fast, millions
said Tom Whipple in The Times. But the PM is not alone in thinking it’s a gamble worth of people could be obliged to
taking. That’s also the broad consensus of the Government’s scientific advisers. Better now, self-isolate for ten days over
they reckon, than to delay until September when, with schools back and people spending more the next few weeks.
time indoors, it might lead to an even larger wave of cases that runs into the winter flu season.
The hope in any case is that the vaccination programme will hold the line. “At the height of the The lifting of restrictions in
pandemic, more than 1 in 10 recorded cases ended in hospital. Today it is fewer than 1 in 50.” England may put it at odds
with the other home nations
Given all the variables, nobody really knows how things will pan out over the coming months, of the UK. Wales has yet to
said Ian Sample in The Guardian. About 99% of UK deaths from Covid so far have been set a date for easing any more
among those aged 40 or over. By 19 July, nearly everyone in this age group will have been rules, though it is expected to
offered two jabs – and we know that a double dose of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer is more announce a review of its
than 90% effective at preventing deaths from the Delta variant of Covid. This means that even policies on 14 July. Scotland
a very large number of infections shouldn’t carry too heavy a toll. On the other hand, the larger has set a later target date on
the reservoir of infected people, the greater is the risk of a new variant emerging that might 9 August for dropping more
have substantial vaccine resistance. “This is the gamble the Government is taking.” restrictions.

What the commentators said What next?

It wasn’t supposed to go this way, said Tim Bale on UnHerd. On the eve of the by-election, Galloway says he plans to
pundits had been confidently predicting a “Hartlepool-style humiliation” for Labour. Angela take legal action to overturn
Rayner was even said to be mulling a leadership challenge. By contrast, the Tories had plenty the by-election result,
of good news to sell, not least the lifting of Covid restrictions later this month. So why did they claiming that he and his
fail? The crass “shenanigans” of former health secretary Matt Hancock certainly didn’t help, team had been defamed
but local factors were probably of more significance. Labour benefited from a down-to-earth throughout the campaign.
and “hyper-local” candidate, with powerful emotional ties to the constituency. Thanks to the One example he has cited
party’s newly-appointed National Campaign Coordinator, Shabana Mahmood, who did is a “false statement” by
“a bang-up job” of getting out the vote, it also benefited from a far slicker than usual local Leadbeater claiming that he
campaign. As a result of all this, talk of a Labour leadership challenge has “fizzled out” for had been seen laughing as
now, said Andrew Grice in The Independent. But Starmer knows that unless he shows she was being abused by
“tangible progress” before Labour’s annual conference in September, his position is far from people outside a mosque.
secure. The clock is still ticking.
Starmer’s allies are reported
The one real loser in this by-election was “British politics”, which has been “dragged into the by The Times to be pushing
gutter” once again by George Galloway, said Alys Denby on CapX. Batley and Spen has seen for the dismissal of Angela
more than its fair share of trouble: Jo Cox was murdered on its streets; a local teacher is still in Rayner for alleged
hiding after showing students a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed. Yet instead of looking to disloyalty. One shadow
heal divisions, Galloway chose to pursue the Muslim vote with a campaign designed to fan the minister has reportedly
flames of anti-Semitism and homophobia (Leadbeater is gay). It was indeed a truly poisonous claimed that Rayner’s
affair, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. Galloway’s explicit goal was to push Labour supporters had even
into third place. The comforting irony is that his “anti-wokery” and pro-Brexit stance may well worked for the party’s
have pulled in “ex-Labour votes that might otherwise have nudged the Tories across the line”. defeat at Batley and Spen.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law
There’s no denying that gloomy reports about climate change have Editor: Theo Tait
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Contributing editors: Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, Catherine
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in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 10 July 2021 THE WEEK
6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week Borders bill unveiled
Leaving Afghanistan Knowingly arriving in the UK
without “valid entry
clearance” will become a
“The Taliban is on the march,” said Ishaan Tharoor in The criminal offence, under the
Washington Post. In recent weeks, its forces have swept government’s new
through Badakhshan Province in northern Afghanistan, Nationality and Borders Bill.
chasing more than 1,000 Afghan government troops across Unveiled this week, the much
the border to Tajikistan. The area was once an anti-Taliban anticipated bill also includes
stronghold. But ever since President Biden confirmed in a maximum life sentence for
anyone convicted of people
April that the last Nato troops would withdraw by 11
smuggling; new powers for
September, at the latest, the fundamentalists have “surged”. Border Patrol to divert boats
Twenty years ago, the US ousted the Taliban from Kabul carrying migrants across the
during “Operation Enduring Freedom”. Now a shaky Channel; and measures to
Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghani, has allow asylum claims to be
been left to battle an emboldened Taliban, which currently processed outside the UK.
controls roughly a third of the country’s 421 districts. The Taliban forces: surging The Home Secretary Priti
US exit, which started to accelerate last week, seems hasty Patel said the reforms were
and disorganised. It abandoned the vast Bagram airbase – the former hub of its operations – “in the “firm but fair”, and would
enable the UK to control its
dead of night” last Friday, reportedly without even informing Bagram’s new Afghan commander.
borders. However,
Biden seems “eager to turn the page”. When the press quizzed him on the withdrawal before the campaigners said they would
US’s annual Fourth of July celebrations, he said, “I want to talk about happy things, man.” “criminalise asylum”.

People in Afghanistan don’t have that luxury, said Shabnam Nasimi in The Daily Telegraph. By Time to sue builders
leaving now, the West is “betraying” millions of ordinary Afghans, particularly women to whom it Home owners are going to
promised – and briefly gave – a better life. Millions of girls are in school, and women have entered be given more time in which
professions and politics. All such gains could vanish overnight. Recent months have seen a wave of to claim compensation for
assassinations of public servants by fundamentalists. And in districts the Taliban has retaken, it has dangerous cladding and poor
already issued new laws ordering women not to leave home alone. The US and Nato have an even workmanship. Under the
Building Safety Bill, owners
more urgent responsibility for those Afghans who risked their lives to work for them, such as
will have 15 years in which to
its local interpreters, said Michael Wendt on The Hill. The US has pledged to evacuate them, but sue developers – up from six
its sluggish “special immigrant visa” scheme has a backlog of some 18,000 people. US officials must – and the change will be
cut through the red tape and get them out, before a vengeful Taliban reaches them first. applied retrospectively,
meaning that the residents
Sadly, that day may now be closer than we imagined, said Hugh Tomlinson in The Times. General of a building completed in
Austin S. Miller, the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, has expressed alarm at the 2010 would have until 2025
speed of Taliban gains. “I don’t like leaving friends in need,” he said. “We should be concerned.” to take action. However,
Biden is making a grave mistake, said Gerald F. Seib in The Wall Street Journal. An “America-first” campaigners said the change
was meaningless, as in many
US grew weary of a faraway war it couldn’t “win”. Yet simply by being there – at the relatively low
cases, the developers no
cost of maintaining a few thousand US troops – it prevented a far more dangerous situation. A longer exist, and the
Taliban return to power would be a humanitarian disaster. But it could also open the door for leaseholders cannot afford
Afghanistan to become, once again, a “safe haven” for Islamist extremists intent on harming the US. to instruct solicitors.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
Parents at a secondary
school in Leicestershire
have been divided by its
new behaviour guidelines.
The e-booklet explains that
in future, children will be
expected to “always smile”,
to thank their teachers after
every class, and respond
to whistled commands.
Looking out of the window
is banned, as is walking in
groups of more than two.
One parent described it as
“horrendous... sort of like a
prison camp”, but the head
teacher at John Ferneley
College said most parents
welcomed the initiative.
Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo
has been identified as the
highest paid Instagram
influencer, commanding an
average of $1.6m for every
post. Dwayne “the Rock”
Johnson is next on the Rich
List ($1.52m) and Ariana
Grande third ($1.51m).
The Stockwell Six, a group of black men who were falsely Poll watch
accused of robbing a corrupt cop 50 years ago, three of whom 81% of Tory voters think the
had their convictions overturned. Courtney Harriot, Paul Green UK is a nation of “equality
and Cleveland Davidson were arrested after leaving Stockwell and freedom”, while 19%
station in 1972, when aged 17 to 20, and were jailed on the basis think it is “institutionally
of testimony fabricated by Derek Ridgewell. One of the six was racist”. Among Labour
voters, 52% agree with the
acquitted; the whereabouts of the other two are unknown.
former and 48% the latter.
Unilever, which won a legal battle with DC Comica, over its 40% of all voters agree that
plan for a brand of cosmetics called Wonder Mum. The US “cancel culture” enforces
publisher had argued that the name was too similar to that of its a “thought and speech
crime-fighting heroine Wonder Woman. However, the Intellectual police” that can ruin lives,
Property Office ruled that the word “mum” was too British to be while 25% think it is right
confused with any member of the superhero Justice League. that if you say something
sexist or racist you “face
The Ever Given, the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal
the consequences”. 68%
in March, which was finally able to continue its journey. The of Tories think that “for the
400-metre long vessel set sail for the Mediterranean, after its most part economic and
owners and insurers agreed a deal to compensate Egypt for the financial success is earned
cost of the salvage operation and damage to the canal bank. and deserved”, compared
with 42% of Labour voters.
Bad week for: The Centre for Policy
Studies/The Times
Callum Saunders, a semi-professional footballer who was
caught out in an insurance scam as a result of delivering a 88% of parents of children
dazzling, halfway-line goal. Saunders, who plays for Haywards under 16 think they would
Heath, had told insurers that an injury he sustained in a car crash definitely or probably allow
had left him unable to work, to support his claim for £55,000. their child to be vaccinated
Alas for him, his goal was so spectacular, it made it onto Sky against Covid.
Sports’ Soccer AM slot – where it was seen by investigators. Office for National Statistics

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 Europe at a glance
Kyiv
Sexism row:
Ukraine’s
defence
ministry
has been
criticised for
proposing
that female
soldiers
march in
high heels
at a parade
celebrating
the country’s independence next month.
Pictures of fatigue-clad female cadets
marching in heels during one of their
twice-daily training sessions for the parade
were published on the ministry’s Facebook
page, sparking furious complaints that the
soldiers were being sexualised and
demeaned. There are 57,000 women in the
Ukrainian armed forces. The army says it
is now looking into alternative footwear.
Madrid
Rape law tightened: The Spanish
government is introducing a law to define
all non-consensual sex as rape, as part of a
major reform of its penal code on assault.
The bill comes five years after a notorious
case in which five men who’d gang raped
an 18-year-old woman, during Pamplona’s
Running of the Bulls festival, were
originally only convicted of sexual
abuse, because in footage of the attack,
the woman appeared silent and passive;
and the court decided that there was
no evidence of violence or intimidation
– which was required under existing law.
The verdict prompted demonstrations
across Spain. Dubbed the “only yes is yes”
law, the new legislation – which still
requires parliamentary approval – will
define rape as any sex without clear
consent. It will also class stalking and cat-
calling as crimes, instead of misdemeanours.
Bern
Fighter jet purchase: The Swiss government
has recommended the purchase of 36
F-35A fighter jets from the US company
Lockheed Martin, angering anti-
armaments groups and left-wing parties
who are now calling for another plebiscite
on the issue. The decision to replace the
country’s ageing fleet of military planes
was narrowly approved in such a vote last
year, but critics of the deal maintain that
© AFP PHOTO/UKRAINIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY PRESS-SERVICE
neutral Switzerland, which last fought a
foreign war more than 200 years ago, has
no need for cutting-edge fighter jets. The
decision to buy the jets from Lockheed,
instead of one of the European firms in
consideration, has also been seen as a
rebuff to the EU at a time of strained
relations between Bern and Brussels. The
government says the planes are necessary
to defend Swiss airspace, and for tasks
such as patrolling the skies during the
World Economic Forum in Davos.
Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk
Stockholm
Supermarket cyberattack: Hundreds of
Swedish supermarkets were forced to
close last weekend owing to a “colossal”
cyberattack that affected companies
worldwide. Coop Sweden, which
accounts for around 20% of the country’s
supermarket sector, shut 500 stores after
its point-of-sale tills and self-service
checkouts were paralysed by the attack.
However, cybersecurity experts said the
hackers’ target was not Coop, but a large
US software supplier that the company
uses: the attack may have been intended
to disrupt Fourth of July celebrations in
America. Hundreds of other companies
around the world were also crippled by the
ransomware attack, whose perpetrators
demanded $70m (£50.5m) in bitcoin to
undo the damage. The US president, Joe
Biden, has ordered an investigation into
the incident, which some suspect was
the work of the Russia-linked REvil
ransomware gang.
Vatican City
Papal surgery:
Pope Francis had
surgery on his
colon at a
hospital in Rome
this week, hours
after addressing
thousands of
people in
St Peter’s Square.
The 84-year-old
Pontiff didn’t
mention the operation during his Sunday
address, though a week earlier he had
asked congregants to pray for him, which
may have been because he was preparing
for the surgery. Francis, who suffers from
diverticulitis, a condition which can
inflame the colon, was described as “in
good general condition” after the three-
hour operation, but was expected to stay
in hospital for a week.
NEWS 7
Moscow
Champagne row: Vladimir Putin has
enraged French wine producers by approv-
ing a law which restricts the Russian word
for champagne – shampanskoye – to
Russian-made bubbly. The law requires
all non-Russian producers, including those
from the Champagne region, to include the
words “sparkling wine” on their labels,
though they can also use the word
“champagne”. The French champagne
producers’ committee said they were
“scandalised” by the move and have called
on French and EU officials to demand that
“this unacceptable law be modified”.
Shampanskoye is the post-Soviet successor
to Soviet champagne, a cheap sparkling
wine that was first produced in the Stalin
era to make bubbly available to all.
Troodos Mountains, Cyprus
Forest fires: Four people have been killed
and 50 homes have been destroyed by
Cyprus’s worst forest fires in decades.
Greece and Israel sent fire-fighting planes
to help contain the blaze that swept
through the foothills of the Troodos
Mountains. Britain, which has military
bases on the island, deployed two search
and rescue helicopters. By the time the fire
was declared fully under control, over 20
square miles of forest and farmland had
been razed. A 67-year-old farmer has been
arrested and remanded in custody on
suspicion of causing the fire, which he
denies. Cyprus has been grappling with a
blistering heatwave: temperatures have hit
40°C, and there has been very little rain
since mid-April. Various parts of Europe
have experienced heatwaves this summer,
including Finland. In Arctic Lapland, the
mercury hit 33.6ºC – the highest
temperature for more than a century.
10 July 2021 THE WEEK
 8 NEWS The world at a glance
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Winnipeg, Canada
Bill Cosby freed: The American comedian Bill Cosby was released Statues toppled: Protesters
from jail last week after a court overturned his sexual assault marked Canada Day last week
conviction on a technicality. In 2018, Cosby, 83, was found guilty by toppling the statues of Queen
of drugging and molesting the former basketball player Andrea Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II
Constand, and sentenced to between three and ten years. She was that stood outside the Manitoba
one of dozens of women who had made such allegations. But in a State Legislature. The protest
review of his case, judges at Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court found was one of a series planned for
that an earlier “non prosecution” deal that he had struck with a Canada Day – which marks the
prosecutor, in return for his deposition in a civil case, should have country’s confederation – aimed
prevented him being tried in 2018. Cosby’s conviction was widely at highlighting historic abuses committed against Indigenous
seen as a landmark moment in the #MeToo movement. Lawyer peoples. In recent weeks, investigators have found the unmarked
Gloria Allred, who represented more than 30 accusers of the man graves of hundreds of Indigenous children who’d been separated
once known as “America’s dad”, described the ruling as from their parents and sent to residential schools, as part of a
“devastating”, but said the decision was no vindication of Cosby. system of forced assimilation in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Wilmington, Delaware
Sexual abuse settlement: The Boy Scouts of America has
reached a preliminary deal to pay $850m (£617m) in
compensation to some of the 60,000 people who have
made claims of child abuse against the organisation.
If it goes through, it will be one of the largest
settlements in US history involving sexual abuse claims. Even
so, Tim Kosnoff, one of the lawyers representing the victims,
described it as a “rotten, chump deal”: he noted that some men
who had been abused for years might end up with payouts of just
a few thousand dollars. The 111-year-old organisation apologised
to survivors and filed for bankruptcy in Delaware last year, saying
it would set up a compensation trust for men who were molested
as youngsters by scoutmasters and other “leaders”.

Gulf of Mexico
“Eye of fire”: An underwater
gas leak caused a huge, whirling
fire to burst out of the sea west
of Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula
last week. Footage of the
strange circular blaze – which
took more than five hours to
bring under control – went viral
on social media, where it was
dubbed the “eye of fire”. According to Mexico’s state-run oil
company Pemex, the subaquatic fireball was the result of a leak
from a pipeline that coincided with a lightning storm.

Ciénaga de Zapata, Cuba

Tropical storm: More than 100,000 Cubans were evacuated from
their homes this week, to avoid the impact of tropical storm Elsa.
Elsa made landfall near Ciénaga de Zapata, a natural park with
few inhabitants, causing mudslides and torrential rains. Before
arriving in Cuba, the storm had passed over the Dominican
Republic and St Lucia (killing three people) before moving on to
Barbados, where more than 1,100 reported their houses had been
damaged – and in 62 cases had collapsed. Prior to losing speed,
Elsa had been recorded as the tropic’s fastest-moving hurricane,
clocking in at 31mph. Cuba is currently battling its worst
Covid-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic, and the mass
evacuation has raised fears of a further spike in infections.

Tegucigalpa Santiago
Assassination plot: The former head of a major Honduran New constitution: A woman from
construction company has been found guilty of the murder of the Chile’s indigenous Mapuche people
prize-winning indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres in has been chosen to lead the drafting
2016. Roberto David Castillo, a US-trained former Honduran of Chile’s new constitution, as part of efforts to ensure power
army intelligence officer, was president of Desarrollos Energéticos is spread more equitably across the nation. Elisa Loncón, a
© MANUEL LOPEZ SAN MARTIN/TWITTER

(Desa) when he collaborated in Cáceres’s assassination. Days
earlier, the campaigner had received threats for opposing one of
Desa’s dam projects. The high court in Tegucigalpa found that
Cáceres had been killed because she had been leading a campaign
to stop a dam being built on the Gualcarque River, on land that is
sacred to her Lenca people. In its verdict, the court also noted that
Castillo had used paid informants as well as military contacts to
monitor Cáceres in the years prior to her murder.
university professor and campaigner for indigenous rights, was
chosen for the role by 96 of the 155 members of Chile’s new
constitutional body. Under her leadership, the delegates will draft
a new text to replace Chile’s previous constitution, which was
produced during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet: it was
notably pro-business, and its many critics say it has done much
to exacerbate inequalities in Chile. Delegates have nine months to
write a new constitution that will then be put to a referendum.

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 The world at a glance
Tbilisi
Pride
attacked:
A planned
Pride
march in
Tbilisi was
cancelled
this week,
after
anti-LGBT protesters (pictured) stormed
its organisers’ office, smashed equipment
and attacked activists. The event would
have been only the second Pride march in
Georgia. Organisers said they couldn’t risk
it going ahead, and blamed the authorities
for failing to ensure its security. The
march had been bitterly opposed in the
socially conservative country; even the
PM, Irakli Garibashvili, had described it
as “not reasonable”.
Mekelle,
Ethiopia
Humanitarian
crisis: Senior UN
officials have
warned that more
than 400,000 people
in Ethiopia’s northern state of Tigray are
now in famine, and another 1.8 million
people are “on the brink” of it. The region
has been the site of an eight-month conflict
between the federal government and forces
loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation
Front (TPLF). Last week, the government
issued a unilateral ceasefire, after the rebels
retook the regional capital, Mekelle. But
there are reports that TPLF troops are
now mobilising against militias from a
neighbouring province, while the central
government stands accused of blocking
humanitarian assistance to Tigray. A UN
spokesperson has described the security
situation as “extremely concerning”.
Jerusalem
Coalition defeat: Israel’s new coalition
government suffered a blow this week
when parliament failed to extend a
controversial citizenship law. The 2003
law – which bars Palestinians from the
occupied West Bank or Gaza from gaining
citizenship or residency rights if they marry
Israeli citizens – expired on Tuesday as a
result of the bill to extend it by six months
ending in a tied vote, of 59 to 59. The new
PM, Naftali Bennett, had declared that he
regarded the compromise bill (originally
the extension was for a year) as a
confidence vote in his coalition – which is
made up of left-wing, centrist, right-wing,
and Arab parties. This was to put pressure
on coalition MPs to support the bill. But
in the end, a member of his own ultra-
nationalist party voted against it, while
two Arab members abstained.
Jammu and
Kashmir, India
Nomadic
government: For
149 years, the
government of the
Indian territory
of Jammu and
Kashmir has
shifted between
a winter base in
Jammu, and the
summer capital of
Srinagar (pictured). But now, the bi-annual
Darbar Move has come to an end: to the
dismay of the traders that profited from
the migration of civil servants and their
families to Jammu, officials will now be
based, permanently, in one location or the
other – and will just have to put up with
the weather. The regional government said
the shift was not necessary, in the digital
age, and was a huge waste of resources.
NEWS 9
Jakarta
Oxygen crisis: The Indonesian government
has called on the gas industry to step up
production of medical oxygen, to help
hospitals buckling under the strain of
Covid admissions. Indonesia’s Covid-19
outbreak is currently the worst in
Southeast Asia. Owing in part to the
spread of the more transmissible Delta
variant, the number of new cases has
quadrupled in a month, to more than
25,000 a day, while deaths reached 728
a day this week. Those figures are likely
to be an underestimate, however, as little
testing takes place outside big cities and
patients who die at home are not included
in the official toll. Hospitals say their
oxygen supplies are either running low or
exhausted. In one hospital, 63 patients
have died as a result of the shortages; and
many are turning away Covid patients.
Atami, Japan
Deadly mudslide: More
than 1,000 soldiers, police
and firefighters were sent
to the Japanese resort of
Atami this week to search
for survivors of a huge
mudslide. Triggered by
days of torrential rain, the
deluge of muddy water,
debris and rock damaged
more than 130 buildings
on Saturday morning. By
Wednesday, four people
were confirmed dead, and
24 were missing. Heavy
rain was ongoing this
week, and residents in
other at-risk areas were
urged to take
precautions.
Canberra
Border tightened: Australia is halving
its cap on international arrivals, in a blow
to the 34,000 Australians still stranded
abroad. From mid-July, only 3,035 people
will be allowed into the country per week.
Australia closed its borders in March 2020
as part of its efforts to contain Covid-19.
These have been successful: it has recorded
just 910 Covid deaths. However, the virus
continues to circulate – Sydney is currently
back in lockdown – and the government
has been accused of being too slow to
roll out vaccines. Fewer than 8% of
Australians have had two jabs.
10 July 2021 THE WEEK
10 NEWS
Belinda Carlisle on drugs
The pioneering all-female band
The Go-Go’s were formed in
LA’s burgeoning 1970s punk
scene – which singer Belinda
Carlisle threw herself into with
gusto. She’d moved to the city
at 18, and knew she was in
trouble with drugs “from the
very beginning”, she told
Emine Saner in The Guardian.
“I always had that little voice:
‘What are you doing?’” She
was “an acid head” at first.
“But when I was introduced to
coke, I thought: ‘Oh my God,
when I get money, I’m going
to buy lots of this.’ And I did.”
She laughs. It was wild: The
Go-Go’s partied with everyone
from Ozzy Osbourne to Andy
Warhol. “I had a great time,”
she says. “I had a complete
blast, but it does become a
problem.” Drugs led the band
to break up, and though she
then had a massive solo career,
she was also left with a 30-year
cocaine addiction. “It was fun
until it stopped being fun,” she
says, “and then it just became
a real f***ing nightmare.”
Becker’s highs and lows
Having won Wimbledon for
the first time aged 17, Boris
Becker has won six Grand
Slam tennis championships.
But he is as well known for his
rollercoaster personal life as for
his sporting achievements, said
Jane Mulkerrins in The Times.
In 1999, he had a notorious
tryst with a waitress in Nobu,
fathering a child in the process;
despite having earned an
estimated £100m, he was
declared bankrupt in 2017; and
he is currently on bail, awaiting
People
trial on charges of financial
malfeasance (which he denies).
It must be stressful – but
Becker, 53, is philosophical.
“I’ve done a lot,” he says. “I’ve
experienced the highs and the
lows. I was never a believer in
not crossing the road when the
light was red. I wouldn’t have
won Wimbledon otherwise. I
cross frontiers to see how far
I can go – I like to go to the
edge. I go as fast as I can and
as far as I can possibly go.”
A riot at Glastonbury
Emily Eavis’s childhood on
Worthy Farm – home of the
Glastonbury Festival – had
some surprisingly ugly
moments. For much of the
1980s, her father Michael was
in a stand-off with new-age
travellers who thought they
should have a free pass to the
site. Tensions reached a boiling
point a day after the event in
1990, says Craig McLean in
the Radio Times. “I was at the In the 1980s, Earvin “Magic” Johnson became a legend on the
kitchen table doing homework basketball court; when he revealed, in 1991, that he was HIV
while Mum was cooking positive, his courage – and his activism – won him legions of
dinner and these explosions admirers off it too. But growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, his life
started,” says Eavis, who was was nothing like as easy as he sometimes made basketball look.
ten at the time. Spoiling for a Every year, his family would drive south to visit relatives in
fight, a group of travellers had Mississippi. The trip was long, and fraught. They took their own
come up to the house to find food to avoid going into roadside diners, and if they stopped to
her father and other festival use the toilet, his father would send the children in groups, so they
crew. “It got really nasty. They could “watch each other’s backs”. The racism was less overt in the
were all outside, throwing northern states, but his hometown of Lansing, Michigan, was de
Molotov cocktails and blowing facto segregated. Johnson was among the first black pupils there
up Land Rovers.” Whisked off to be “bussed” to a majority-white high school. He soon joined the
to her grandmother’s house basketball team where, at first, his teammates were reluctant even
nearby, Eavis saw ambulances to pass the ball to him. It was tough – but the experience proved
“streaming” past. The rioters valuable. “It taught me how to work alongside somebody who
caused £50,000 worth of doesn’t look like me,” he told Oliver Laughland in The Guardian.
damage, and 235 people were “And what I would find out later is that is the way America is. No
arrested. It was, she has said, matter where [I] turned, whether I was coached by one, whether
“one of the lowest points of the they owned the team I played for, or the partnerships I was trying
entire festival history”. to create in business… it was somebody white in charge.”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint:

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured
Farewell
fashion designer Paul Costelloe
Towels, please Richard Donner,
“Tennis is no longer a titanic battle popular director of
1 Don’t Be Cruel by Otis Blackwell, performed by Elvis Presley Superman, died 5
between athletes at the top of their game.
2 On Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh and Luke Kelly, performed July, aged 91.
It’s hour after hour of people wiping their
by Luke Kelly and The Dubliners
hands on a towel. I don’t get it. These guys Dick Leonard, MP,
3 Save the Last Dance for Me by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, journalist and polit-
and girls are at the peak of physical fitness,
performed by The Drifters ical biographer, died
but after serving one ball, in England,
4 Les Champs-Élysées by Mike Wilsh, Mike Deighan and Pierre 24 June, aged 90.
Delanoë, performed by Joe Dassin
where it’s only ever 13°C, they have some-
how developed such sweaty palms that they Clare Peploe,
5 Ol’ Man River by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, screenwriter and
performed by Paul Robeson must stroll to the back of the court and
stand there for a few moments, wiping the filmmaker, died 23
6 Silent Worship by Arthur Somervell and Handel, performed June, aged 79.
by Aled Jones rivers of perspiration away. Then, after
several minutes of doing this, they amble Gianna Rolandi,
© PHILIP CHEUNG/GUARDIAN /EYEVINE

7 ‘O Sole mio by Giovanni Capurro, Eduardo di Capua and Alfredo

to a comfy chair at the side of the court, American soprano,
Mazzucchi, performed by Luciano Pavarotti and the National
died 20 June, aged
Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Giancarlo Chiaramello where they chew idly on 4 grams of protein
68.
8* Grace by Seán and Frank O’Meara, performed by Rod Stewart bar before taking a tiny sip of their electro-
lyte drink. Then it’s back to the hand- Peter Zinovieff,
wiping, and so on, until one of them falls composer and
Book: Reynard the Fox by Anne Louise Avery * Choice if allowed only engineer, died 23
Luxury: paper and watercolour paints one record over and the other is declared the winner.” June, aged 88.
Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 Briefing NEWS 13

The great chip shortage

Since late last year, there has been a severe shortage of microchips, which is now affecting industries across the world

How bad is the shortage? will rise; and premium electronic features
“Never seen anything like it,” Tesla’s like navigation systems or extra screens
Elon Musk tweeted last month. Since are being dropped in order to stretch the
late 2020, the world has been facing an supply of chips further. In electronics,
unexpected dearth of microchips – the trade prices for computer memory have
tiny integrated circuits that are nowadays risen around 30% since the start of
found in practically every manufactured 2020, pushing up costs for items such
device with a battery or a plug – from as laptops and printers. HP has raised
toasters to TVs to airbags to fighter consumer PC prices by 8% and printers
jets. The scarcity was first seen in by more than 20% in a year. Prices for
sophisticated consumer electronics: TVs, smartphones and home appliances
gaming consoles like the PlayStation 5 look set to increase too. The chip
and the new Xbox have had big order shortage also has governments worried.
backlogs; prices for computer graphics
cards have shot up. But because semi- Why are governments worried?
conductor chips are so ubiquitous, a Chips are now such a crucial component
large number of industries have been in many strategic technologies – from
affected. The car industry has been hit defence systems to cybersecurity to
hardest of all. Modern cars can easily “Chips are the new oil” renewable energy – that their
contain 3,000 chips, and the shortage has manufacture has become a big
slowed down vehicle assembly lines across the world: global geopolitical issue: policymakers say that “chips are the new oil”.
output will drop by four million cars, nearly 5%, this year. They were invented in the US, and much of the cutting-edge
design still takes place there, but around 80% of production
Why is it happening? now happens in Asia because costs are lower: mostly in Taiwan,
At the best of times, chip supply chains are hard to maintain: it South Korea and China. The world’s biggest producer by volume
is an industry prone to gluts and shortages. Fabrication plants is TSMC in Taiwan. Intel, based in California, is the biggest by
(“fabs”) for advanced chips are among the world’s most complex revenue. Along with South Korea’s Samsung, these companies
manufacturing facilities, costing tens of billions of dollars to build. dominate high-end, specialised chips. But China is positioned to
Lasers print billions of transistors onto tiny areas of silicon become the largest producer by 2030: its latest five-year plan sets
wafers; it can take three to four months to turn a large silicon the goal of meeting 70% of its semiconductor needs by 2025.
wafer into a useable batch of chips (see box). So the industry Europe accounts for less than 10% of global chip production.
tends to swing between undersupply and oversupply, in what
economists call a pork cycle: as with breeding pigs, there are lags What are governments doing about it?
in production. Producers invest when prices are high and find they Last month, the US Senate passed the Innovation and
are left with too much capacity when it finally comes on stream. Competition Act, a $250bn bill designed to boost US
At present, however, the trend in the industry is of remorseless semiconductor production, along with scientific research and
expansion: green tech, cloud computing, 5G, artificial intelligence, other strategic technologies. In March, the European Commission
cryptocurrency, robotics – all these growth areas eat up chips. set out an ambitious plan to grow its share of the global
And the pandemic has helped to create the perfect storm. semiconductor market to 20% by 2030, and committed $160bn
of its Covid recovery fund to tech projects. The UK has long had
What effect did the pandemic have? a strong presence in the design side of the industry, but few
It closed down many fabs temporarily. At the same time, the great producers; Newport Wafer Fab, the UK’s largest chip producer,
increase in working from home, and the increase in demand for has been acquired by Nexperia, a Chinese-owned company.
home entertainment, created a surge
in demand for electronics. PC sales The triumph of the microchip How long will the shortage last?
rose by 13% last year. In New York A microchip is a collection of anywhere from a few There is no end in sight. Intel’s chief
City alone, the department of hundred to tens of billions of tiny circuits on a small executive, Pat Gelsinger, said that he
education bought 350,000 iPads. wafer of silicon. Silicon is a semiconductor – it can thinks it could be two years before
Video calling meant that data centres either conduct electricity or contain it. On a chip, silicon production is able to ramp up. “The
needed more capacity. And during the transistors are miniature switches that can be turned shortage will probably continue for a
worst of the pandemic, car purchases on and off by electronic signals. Computers run using few years,” said Michael Dell, chief
plummeted. So while electronics binary code. Transistors reflect this: the digits 1 and 0 executive of Dell Technologies, earlier
used in binary represent the on and off states of a
companies bought up all available transistor. Essentially, the chip’s job is to shuttle
in the year. The likes of TSMC,
production capacity, car electrons around in a way prescribed by computer Samsung and Intel are all investing
manufacturers cancelled their orders. code. All the data on computers – numbers, pictures, heavily. But “even if chip factories
But later, when the carmakers were music, images – is stored and processed in this way. are built all over the world, it takes
ready to gear up production again, The invention of this kind of transistor, at Bell Labs in time”, says Dell. Many companies are
they found themselves at the back of New Jersey in 1947, and its increasing miniaturisation examining their supply chains: Tesla
the queue: microchip fabs can take up is the backbone of modern electronics. Moore’s Law, is considering buying a chip plant
to six months to re-start production coined by the chip pioneer Gordon Moore, states that outright. High-tech industries will
of specific types of chip. the number of transistors on a chip doubles about probably recover first, towards the
every two years, making computers ever more end of this year. Cars and home
How does this affect us? powerful. Today’s advanced chips are dizzyingly appliances, which use cheaper, older
complex: lasers imprint circuits just 12 nanometres
The supply of cars for sale is set to chips will take longer: they are not so
wide, the length a fingernail grows in 12 seconds.
be restricted later this year because of Transistors are thought to be the most manufactured profitable for manufacturers, so there
the shortage, the leading UK motor items in world history. The number of microchips sold is not the impetus for them to invest.
dealership Pendragon warned last globally in April reached a record of nearly 100 billion. Product delays and parts shortages
week. With fewer cars to sell, prices will continue for some time.

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

14 NEWS The UK at a glance
Edinburgh
Flash floods: A violent thunderstorm
triggered flash floods that brought chaos
to parts of Edinburgh last weekend. On
Sunday, nearly half the average rainfall
for the whole of July fell in less than an
hour, overloading drains, stranding cars
and forcing shops to close. Water was
knee-deep in Princes Street, the city’s
main shopping street. According to
Edinburgh Council, up to 37mm of rain
fell during the storm. Councillor Lesley
Macinnes said: “No city’s drainage
systems are designed to cope with the sort of short, sharp volume
of water experienced.” More rain was forecast for this week.
Sunderland
Nissan boost: Nissan has set out its plans for a £1bn battery
“gigafactory” at its Sunderland plant, which will lead to the
creation of around 6,000 new jobs at the site and in British supply
chains. The new 9GWh factory will be run by Nissan’s Chinese
partner Envision AESC. The scheme also includes investment in
a new all-electric crossover vehicle, in a UK battery recycling
facility, and in up to ten solar farms to power the project. Nissan
gave no details of government support, but ministers are thought
to have promised state aid worth £100m. The announcement ends
years of concern about the post-Brexit future of Britain’s largest
car plant. “This project is the demonstration of the renaissance
of the British car industry,” said Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s chief
operating officer, while PM Boris Johnson described the project
as a “major vote of confidence in the UK”.

Belfast
Prosecutions dropped: To the anger of victims’ families, two
soldiers accused of Troubles-era killings have been told that they
will not face trial after all. One of the men, Soldier F, had been
accused of murdering James Wray and William McKinney on
Bloody Sunday in 1972. The other, Soldier B, was to be
prosecuted for the murder of 15-year-old Daniel Hegarty, who
was shot in the head during an Army operation in the same year.
But last week, Northern Ireland prosecutors announced that, in
light of an earlier case in which key evidence against veterans
facing similar charges was deemed inadmissible, there was no
longer any “reasonable prospect of conviction”. Veterans groups
welcomed the decision, but the Bloody Sunday families described
it as a “damning indictment of the British justice system”.

Slough, Berkshire
Council cash crisis: A local authority has effectively declared itself
bankrupt and suspended all non-urgent spending. Revealing a
“catastrophic” £100m black hole in its finances, Slough Borough
Council warned that “rigorous” measures, including job losses,
cuts to services and the sale of buildings, were now needed.
Otherwise, it said, the deficit could reach £150m by 2024. The
town has been hard hit by the pandemic, but the Labour-run
authority accepts that years of financial mismanagement and
accounting errors are partly to blame for its plight. It is the
third council to face insolvency in the last three years, after
Northamptonshire and Croydon. Earlier this year, the National
Audit Office found that at least 25 local authorities were on the
brink of bankruptcy.

Cardiff
Farming crime-buster: The Welsh government has appointed a
Wildlife and Rural Crime Coordinator, the first such post in the
UK, to combat rising crime levels in the countryside. Rob Taylor
will work on a range of issues, from fly-tipping and the theft of
heating oil to dog attacks on sheep. A recent report by the
farmers’ union, NFU Cymru, found that around one in five Welsh
farmers had been the victims of crime in 2020. Theft accounted
for more than half the offences; more than a third of farmers had
felt the need to install CCTV. Across the UK, rural crime rose by
11% in 2019 with organised gangs targeting expensive machinery
such as quad bikes and tractors, sometimes for sale overseas.

Isles of Scilly
Wally not wanted: The giant
Arctic walrus who appeared in
British waters in the spring has
outstayed his welcome in his
latest haunt off the Isles of
Scilly. Wally, who weighs
around a tonne, has damaged
or sunk a dozen boats since
arriving at St Mary’s around
three weeks ago, and British Divers Marine Life Rescue has now
drawn up an action plan to dissuade the walrus from swimming
in or near the harbour. This includes the use of a range of
“humane deterrents”, such as the recorded growls of polar bears.
London
Transport gloom: Transport for London has lost a record £100m
in advertising revenue, owing to commuters staying away from its
Tube, train and bus network during the pandemic. As passenger
numbers dropped to as low as 10% of their normal levels last
year, advertisers withdrew their business. As a result, TfL’s
commercial revenues in the 12 months to March fell to £50m,
down from £158m in 2019. Passengers are now returning –
numbers on the Tube are back to 45% of their 2019 levels, while
on the buses the figure is 65% – but TfL is still struggling to meet
its costs. Last month, it secured another £1bn in emergency
funding from the Department for Transport. In return, TfL has
pledged to make savings of £900m this financial year.

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 Best articles: Britain NEWS 15
Pessimism sells, says Emma Duncan. That’s why a new book,
Everything is F*cked, is a bestseller. It tells us of the “paradox of IT MUST BE TRUE…
Believe me: progress”: the wealthier and safer the place you live, it says, “the
more likely you are to die by suicide”. It’s a startling claim, but
I read it in the tabloids

things really the good news is it’s baseless. Yes, poor folk living in rich neigh-
bourhoods are more likely to kill themselves than those living in
A 65-year-old Austrian man
was recovering in hospital

are looking up poor ones, perhaps due to the starker comparison in fortunes. Yet
overall, it’s just not true that greater wealth makes people more
this week after an escaped 5ft
python slithered through the
plumbing and bit him in the
Emma Duncan suicidal. Quite the opposite. Since the mid-1990s, as the world crotch while he used his
has got far richer, the global suicide rate has fallen by a third. lavatory. Police in the city of
The Times For young women in China, it has declined by an incredible 90%. Graz said that, upon sitting
Urbanisation has freed them from the constraints of village life down on the toilet shortly
and unhappy marriages (and made it harder to get hold of guns after 6am, the unnamed man
felt a sudden “pinch in the
and poison). In many countries, the suicide rate among old people
genital area”. He found an
has also plummeted – a trend almost certainly due to the higher albino reticulated python,
incomes and advances in medical treatment and palliative care which is thought to have
that the elderly now enjoy. So don’t let the pessimists get away escaped from the home of a
with calling this the “paradox of progress”. “This is progress.” neighbouring reptile collector.
However, pythons aren’t
So that’s that then, says Matthew Lynn. As of 19 July, we’ll no venomous and the wound
longer have to wear a face mask in enclosed public spaces. Some was said to be “light”. The
Unmasking the people will bin them with relief, others will opt to keep wearing
them, and both sides will move on, respecting the other’s point of
owner may face criminal
negligence charges.
line that divides view. Think so? Fat chance. A glance at social media tells us that
the face mask is now a cultural dividing line. “Maskers and anti-
a nation maskers look set to become the new Remainers and Leavers (with
almost, if not quite, the same tribes in both camps).” The former
Matthew Lynn see mask-wearing as an act of good citizenship and despise those
who’d put the community at risk; the latter see it as a “pointless
The Daily Telegraph imposition” favoured by “doom-mongers who never want to
return to normal life”. The clinical utility of masks is secondary;
it’s all about signalling the type of person you are. “Are you
freedom-loving and rational, or socially responsible and selfless?”
With luck we may succeed in beating Covid soon, but the divi-
sions opened up by lockdown will be with us for years to come.

Britain isn’t Turkey or Egypt, says Patrick Cockburn. Our Govern-

ment isn’t empowered to silence critics and conceal wrongdoing.
Don’t let them But in insidious ways, I fear we’re moving that way. Ministers and
officials have started to correspond through encrypted messaging
An engineer from Solihull
has claimed a new Guinness
turn journalists services that leave no paper trail. And they’ve taken to blocking
Freedom of Information Act requests: some 50% are now
World Record by stacking
five M&Ms on top of one
into spies rejected, up from 15% when the Act was introduced. But the
most sinister development is the change to the Official Secrets Act
another. “Five M&Ms
doesn’t sound like a lot,”
Patrick Cockburn put forward in a little-noticed Home Office consultative paper. says Will Cutbill, “but it was
Replete with scares about the hidden enemies we face, it offers a nearly impossible.” While
The Independent shockingly broad definition of espionage – “the covert process of bored during lockdown, he
obtaining sensitive confidential information not normally publicly “decided to see how many
available”; anyone revealing information regarded as a state of them I could stack on
secret, it says, will be liable for prosecution. Yet in my experience top of each other”, he said,
such “secrets” typically involve not some vital plan for defence of trying hundreds of times
the realm – the stuff of spy fiction – but official blunders which over two days before topping
politicians only want revealed, if at all, at a time of their choosing. the previous record of four.
The Government is seeking to redefine journalism as espionage. “I was absolutely ecstatic,”
he said. “I considered
It’s increasingly hard to get justice in this country, says the FT. attempting six, but there’s
The criminal courts of England and Wales can’t deliver it. The no chance.”
British justice backlog of cases they have to deal with is at a record 60,000. The
pitifully few rape victims who get “to see their alleged attacker A yellow tiddlywink has been
can never charged face an average 1,000-day wait between offence and end
of trial”. When trials do go ahead, most are heard in “crumbling,
extracted from a woman’s
nostril, 37 years after it got

come cheap dirty buildings where basic services don’t work and support staff
have been cut to the bone”. The pandemic has exacerbated the
stuck up there. Mary
McCarthy, a 45 year old from
Christchurch, New Zealand,
Editorial problem, but the underlying cause is a decade of spending cuts. inhaled the tiddlywink by
© WILL CUTBILL/GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS

Some measures the Ministry of Justice has taken in order to cope mistake while playing a game
Financial Times – repurposing civic buildings to serve as emergency “Nightingale” when she was eight. She
courts; allowing some short technical proceedings to be heard forgot about the episode,
remotely – are welcome. Other proposed remedies, notably the but afterwards suffered from
plan to reduce juries from 12 members to seven, are certainly not. chronic sinus pain, which
became very severe after a
Eroding a fundamental right to be tried “by a full complement of Covid-19 swab test last year.
one’s peers” cannot be justified. No, the only way to fix our Doctors found and removed
broken justice system is to fund it properly. If we don’t, the long the offending object in June.
delays will continue, “and justice delayed is justice denied”.

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best of the American columnists
The “heat dome”: sweltering in the Pacific Northwest
It’s a well-known fact in Seattle that
you can’t count on warm weather until
after the Fourth of July, said Jane C.
Hu on Slate. While friends elsewhere
in the US are enjoying barbecues, we’re
still languishing under the grey skies
and drizzle of what locals like to call
“Juneuary”. Not this year. Over the
past fortnight, the US Pacific
Northwest has experienced an
unprecedented heatwave. Before this
summer, the temperature in Seattle had
reached 100°F just three times since
1894, but it did it for three days in a
row at the end of June, hitting a peak A cooling station in the Oregon Convention Centre
of 108°F. In Portland, the temperature
reached 116°F – higher than has ever been recorded in
Houston, Texas, 2,000 miles south. The stifling heat buckled
roads, caused power outages, knocked out tram systems, and is
thought to have caused at least 76 deaths across the region.
The blistering temperatures were the result of a so-called heat
dome, said Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic: a meteorological
phenomenon that occurs when a static high-pressure system
traps concentrations of hot air over a certain location. It would
once have counted as “a one-in-1,000-year event”, but this sort
of freak weather seems to be growing ever more common as a
result of the warming climate. And
the Pacific Northwest wasn’t remotely
prepared for the heat. Seattle is the
least air-conditioned metro area in the
US – less than half of residents have
it – because the city has never really
needed it. Community centres and
libraries had to be hastily converted
into mass public cooling stations
where people could take refuge from
the extreme temperatures. Both the
region and the US as a whole need to
step up their climate contingency
planning. Heat is already the deadliest
type of weather event in the US,
killing more people than hurricanes
or floods. And the problem is only getting worse.
This crisis will have served as a wake-up call for many
Americans about the “first-hand realities of a heating planet”,
said James Ross Gardner in The New Yorker. People are used
to hearing of record-high temperatures in desert states such as
Nevada or Arizona, but not in verdant Washington and
Oregon. Asked in 2014 where people might consider moving
as global temperatures rise, a climate researcher told The New
York Times: “The answer is the Pacific Northwest.” The way
things are going, that no longer looks such a safe bet.

Here’s an awful statistic, says Brian Sheppard: in the US, about one black man in 1,000 will be killed
How to stop by a police officer; and nearly one in five of the men killed will be unarmed. Clearly, something needs
to change. A good place to start would be to make it harder for officers to access firearms. The
cops shooting reality is that they don’t need a loaded gun on them all the time, and the constant presence of their
firearms often causes tension and leads to situations escalating out of control. Officers spend only an
from the hip estimated 4% of their time responding to crimes of violence. Most of their tasks pose little danger to
them: the death rate of farmers, garbage collectors, roofers and delivery drivers is two to three times
Brian Sheppard higher than that of cops. So let’s introduce a system whereby guns are kept in smart lockboxes in
police cars that can be remotely opened by staff back at the station, when officers on the ground
Slate specifically request it. As a fail-safe, officers would be able to override the lock, although that would
trigger a mandatory review. Yes, this might lead to some incidents of officers being hurt or killed
while their gun is still in the box, but those tragedies would “likely be outnumbered by the peaceful
encounters that would otherwise have taken a dark turn had a gun been on the officer’s hip”.

The recent headlines about Britney Spears have highlighted the problem of “guardianship abuse”
But who will in the US, says Kimberly Guilfoyle. Whether or not the star is being exploited by her father under
a legal protection order, this is happening to many vulnerable people. There are 1.5 million,
guard the mostly elderly, individuals under some form of guardianship in the US, with total assets of around
$270bn. Combine that with a system that presumes good faith and lacks adequate scrutiny, and the
guardians? opportunities for malfeasance by corrupt lawyers and other bad actors are “abundant”. Some awful
cases have come to light. Last year, a Florida woman escaped her guardian-imposed imprisonment
Kimberly Guilfoyle in a care facility by using a phone and Facebook to signal for help. In 2019, a retired schoolteacher
died alone in a hospice in Jefferson County, Alabama, after being placed there by a court-appointed
Newsweek guardian who reportedly banned her family from visiting her. The woman didn’t even live in the
county, but had been caught up in the system after stopping at a hospital on her way home from a
trip. “Guardianship abuse might just be one of the biggest criminal enterprises threatening the elderly
in America”, but we won’t know for sure until officials give the crisis the attention it deserves.

Who were the best and worst presidents in US history? Numerous league tables have been compiled
The worst over the years, says Mark K. Updegrove. The latest – based on a survey of 142 historians, who
scored ten criteria such as “crisis leadership” and “performance within context of time” – was issued
president in last week by C-SPAN. Top of the rankings, as usual, was Abraham Lincoln. And in last place, again,
was James Buchanan. This must have come as a relief to Donald Trump, but he didn’t exactly do
US history well: he finished 41st out of the 44 former presidents, above only Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and
Franklin Pierce, the three leaders who botched the lead-up to and the aftermath of the Civil War.
Mark K. Updegrove Some presidents rank poorly just after leaving office, but rise up the table as history takes a kinder
view of their tenure. Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, for example, both started in low
The New York Times positions, but are now ranked in the top ten. Will this happen with Trump? Unlikely. His term in
office will always be remembered for two key crises: the pandemic, and the attack on the Capitol
fuelled by his false claims of a stolen election. “Trump’s fecklessness in both cases, and his general
failure to put the nation above himself, will almost certainly continue to doom him in future polls.”

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 Best articles: International NEWS 17

South Africa: how the courts stood up to Jacob Zuma

When Nelson Mandela opened South
Africa’s Constitutional Court in 1995,
he told the assembled judges to “stand
on guard not only against direct assault
on the principles of the constitution,
but against insidious corrosion”. Some
26 years later, they’ve done just that,
said Juniour Khumalo on News24
(Johannesburg). In a landmark ruling
last week, former president Jacob
Zuma was jailed for 15 months for
contempt of court, for defying an order
to attend an inquiry into allegations of
corruption during his nine-year
presidency, which ended in 2018. The Zuma: no longer “untouchable”
court spelt out the many ways in which
the former president had lied, sought to mislead the public, and
had ultimately, they said, tried to “destroy the rule of law”.
This is the first time in the country’s history a former president
has been jailed, said Richard Calland on IOL News (Cape
Town). It shows, at last, that “no one is above the law”.
“No one has done more to corrode the institutional pillars of
post-apartheid South Africa than Zuma,” said The Economist.
Even before sentencing, he was facing a separate criminal trial
this month over allegations – which he denies – that he took
hundreds of bribes from a French arms company in the decade
before he was president. And his presidency, won on an African
National Congress ticket, became
synonymous with “the demolition of
the parts of the state meant to stop
graft”. The inquiry that was his
eventual undoing is focused on the
so-called “state capture” scandal, in
which he was accused of allowing the
Gupta brothers, Indian-born billionaire
businessmen, to pick stooges to head
government ministries, said Yusuf
Akínpèlú in Premium Times (Abuja).
The Guptas and Zuma deny wrong-
doing, but the inquiry has heard
damning testimony from more than
250 witnesses, including tales of cash
stuffed into designer bags and delivered
as bribes, and the theft of up to £29bn from state coffers.
Zuma claims the allegations are part of a “conspiracy” to jail
him, said Mcebisi Ndletyana on The Conversation (Melbourne),
and has launched a series of attacks on the Constitutional
Court. That left its judges with two options: “capitulate to
Zuma’s megalomania, or uphold the rule of law”. To his
supporters in his native KwaZulu-Natal, who viewed him as
“untouchable”, the decision came as a great shock, said Wayne
Duvenage in the Daily Maverick (Cape Town). But his support
is “dwindling”, and for millions of South Africans this was, at
last, a chance to see “what the rule of law looks like”.

ITALY Italy’s populist Five Star Movement is in turmoil, says Sebastiano Messina. Founded in 2009 by
Beppe Grillo, the comedian, it won the biggest vote share of any party in elections in 2018, and
Is it curtains joined two subsequent coalitions. But it has been out of government since the second coalition
collapsed in February, and faces sagging poll ratings after reneging on key policy pledges. So in an
for Five Star’s effort to revive his party’s fortunes, Grillo recruited Italy’s former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte,
as its new leader in March. Conte, a lawyer, promised a “complete restructuring” of the party;
populists? sensibly enough, when it previously offered a mere “jumble of dreams, utopias and illusions”. That
proved too much for Grillo, a lifelong anti-establishmentarian, who has turned on Conte, publicly
la Repubblica accusing him of lacking “political vision” and talent. Yet he may find his broadside backfires: there
(Rome) is mounting speculation that Conte could now form a new party – and win support from many of
Five Star’s current MPs. Even by the standards of Italian politics, it’s a mess. Then again, a party
founded on the premise of telling politicians to “f**k off” was never likely to stay the course.

TURKEY Seldom has a grand infrastructure project looked less likely to succeed, says Ibrahim Kiras. Last
month, a foundation stone was laid for the first of six bridges over a huge new canal that President
A “crazy” Erdogan wants to build near Istanbul. It was the symbolic first step in what Erdogan himself has
called a “crazy” plan for a 28-mile waterway that would relieve pressure on the Bosphorus strait:
canal that is it would run from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara (which leads to the Mediterranean). The
canal has “no political support” outside Erdogan’s party, and has been dismissed by experts as
going nowhere “objectionable and dangerous”, likely to wreck marine ecosystems and compromise the city’s water
supply. In a weak economy, there’s no obvious way to pay for the scheme, for which there is no clear
Karar estimate: Erdogan said it was $15bn; the official website said $75bn. Opposition parties say they’ll
(Istanbul) repudiate the contracts if they win elections in 2023; Turkish banks are loath to finance the plan.
Yet Erdogan is pressing ahead. Why? Because abandoning it would represent a serious loss of face,
and enrage his wealthy supporters, many of whom have bought land along what will be the canal’s
banks to build luxury homes. It’s absurd: this delusional project must be stopped, once and for all.

With two words, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has put the US in its place, says Maleeha
PAKISTAN Hashmey. As the US military withdraws from Afghanistan, it is badgering Pakistan to let CIA drones

The price we’ve be stationed on our soil for counter-terror operations. The drones are needed, says the US, to replace
the intelligence infrastructure it built during its 20-year war in Afghanistan. But Khan isn’t
paid for the US interested. “Absolutely not”, he replied when asked in a recent interview whether he’d allow such
a deployment. The US should take him at his word. Khan campaigned on getting Americans out of
War on Terror Pakistan, and since his election in 2018, there have been no drone strikes here. We’ve already paid
an “unbelievably high” price in the so-called War on Terror. At least 60,000 Pakistanis have died in
The Nation the conflict, and our country has suffered an estimated $118bn in economic losses. In recent years,
(Lahore) we’ve gone to great lengths to protect ourselves against militant incursions from Afghanistan – even
building a chain-link fence, topped with barbed-wire, along all 1,640 miles of our border. Allowing
US drone launches could jeopardise that new-found safety, along with the stability which is a
“mighty win-win” for all nations in the region. The “old Pakistan” that bowed to the US is gone.

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

18 NEWS
What the scientists are saying…
A simple test for 50 cancers
A simple blood test that can detect more
than 50 types of cancers before symptoms
appear could be used as a screening tool
for people over 50. The test, created by
the US medtech company Grail, uses AI
to examine data on the tiny fragments of
cell-free DNA that are shed by tumours
into the bloodstream. By looking for
particular chemical patterns, it can
distinguish the signs of cancer – with a
false positive rate of just 0.5% – and also
pinpoint the tumour’s likely location in
the body. In a trial, reported in the Annals
of Oncology, the Galleri test correctly
identified 65.6% of cancers involving solid
tumours for which no screening options
currently exist, such as oesophageal, liver
and pancreatic cancers. For breast, bowel,
cervical and prostate cancers, for which
screening does exist, the figure was 33.7%.
It correctly predicted the tumour’s location
about 80% of the time. The NHS will
begin a pilot scheme of the test this year,
with a view to making it widely available
by 2025. “Early detection – particularly
for hard-to-treat conditions like ovarian
and pancreatic cancer – has the potential
to save many lives. This promising blood
test could therefore be a game-changer in
cancer care,” said NHS chief executive Sir
Simon Stevens.
Enter the Dragon Man
In 1933, a large and remarkably complete
fossilised skull was uncovered near the
Chinese city of Harbin by labourers
working on a new railway bridge.
The project was being overseen by the
country’s Japanese occupiers, and rather
than see it fall into their hands, the Chinese
workers wrapped up the skull, and hid it
in a disused well. There it remained until
2017, when one of those men was dying,
Health & Science
A recreation of the Dragon Man
and told his son his secret. Now, four
years on, a Chinese-led team has proposed
that the skull belongs to a previously
unknown human species – a large-brained
hunter-gatherer who lived at least 146,000
years ago, and who may turn out to be our
closest evolutionary relative, supplanting
the Neanderthals. They have called it
Homo longi – or Dragon Man. The
individual, an adult male, had a mix of
primitive features, such as a broad nose
and low brow, and more modern ones,
including flat, delicate cheekbones. But
although his skull is unusual, other
experts cautioned that it might be too soon
to cite him as evidence of a new human
lineage. He could, however, be something
similarly exciting: a Denisovan, a
mysterious human ancestor from Asia
mainly known from DNA.
The Chinese findings were published
just days before an Israeli team said they
had identified a 120,000-year-old jawbone
as the remains of one of the “last
survivors” of another previously unknown
human group, which they have called
Nesher Ramla Homo. As the fossils
have Neanderthal features, they believe
ancestors of this group migrated from the
region, and gave rise to the Neanderthals
in Europe. “It all started in Israel,” Dr Hila
May told the BBC. “During interglacial
periods, waves of humans migrated from
the Middle East to Europe.”
How mongooses “level up”
People talk a lot about levelling up and
building a fairer society; but banded
mongooses seem to have actually done it,
reports The Independent. Females within
groups of mongooses have evolved to all
give birth on the same night. The mothers
have no way of knowing which of the
pups in the communal crèche are theirs
– and cannot give them extra care. So
instead, they focus their attention on the
pups that need it the most. For the study,
by researchers from the Universities of
Exeter and Roehampton, half the pregnant
females in a group in Uganda were given
extra food during the breeding season,
leading to greater than normal inequalities
in birth weight among their offspring. But
the researchers found that in the period
after birth, the females who’d been fed
extra rations gave extra care to the pups
of the less well-fed females – and as a
result, the inequalities between the pups
disappeared. “We predicted that a ‘veil of
ignorance’ would cause females to focus
their care on the pups most in need – and
this is what we found,” said Professor
Michael Cant of Exeter University.
“Those most able to help offer it to the
most needy, and in doing so minimise
the risk that their own offspring will face
a disadvantage.”

The “last ice area” is now melting A million long Covid cases
The Arctic’s “last refuge” for polar bears Almost a million people in Britain were
and walruses may be more vulnerable to suffering long Covid in May – around
climate change than previously thought, 376,000 of whom had been battling
researchers have warned. The Wandel symptoms for at least a year. The
Sea region, to the north of Greenland, is figures came from the Office for
referred to as the “last ice area”, because National Statistics (ONS), which defined
long Covid as symptoms persisting for
the ice there has remained thick year on
more than four weeks. Two-thirds of
year – and because it was expected to sufferers said their symptoms were
remain so, even after other parts of the limiting their day-to-day activities; nearly
Arctic melted. As such, it was viewed as one in five said it was limiting them “a
a vital refuge for mammals that use ice lot”. Fatigue was the most commonly
to rest, feed and breed. But last August, reported symptom, followed by short-
a German research vessel sailed to the area ness of breath. But although the ONS
– and found alarmingly large stretches of open water where ice should have been. figures suggested that 962,000 people
Researchers from the University of Washington have now looked at data and had long Covid in May, separate
research has found that between
satellite images dating back to 1979, and found that climate change has contributed
February and April, only 23,273 cases
to long-term thinning of the ice in the Wandel Sea area. This, in turn, made it more had been formally recorded by GPs in
susceptible to the main cause of last year’s melt: unusually strong summer winds, England. Experts said the discrepancy
which blew the ice away. The area had been considered relatively safe from climate could be down to sufferers not seeing
© CHUANG ZHAO

change, because as sea ice circulates, it piles up against Greenland and the northern their GPs – but also the result of GPs not
Canadian coast. But climate models will now have to be reassessed, they said. diagnosing cases, or not logging them.

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

20 NEWS
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
In his new role as chairman
of the British Museum,
George Osborne will help
the institution reach “ever
larger” audiences. As a
politician, he faced a similar
challenge, recalled Rachel
Cooke in The Observer.
Years ago, she was sent to
interview Osborne when he
was an obscure backbench
MP. The Tory membership,
he told her, was too old.
“‘What the party needs,
Rachel, is people like you…’
There was a brief pause
while I sat to attention.
Then, full throttle, he said it:
‘Ordinary people.’”
Michael Gove and Sarah
Vine made their imminent
divorce public only last
week, said The Sunday
Times – but before that,
Vine had hinted that all was
not well between them. In a
Daily Mail column in April,
after the death of the Duke
of Edinburgh, she wrote:
“Too often in marriage –
especially marriages where
one person is richer or more
powerful than the other –
one ends up consuming
the other.” Then last week,
while discussing Matt
Hancock’s affair, she let rip:
“The problem with the wife
who has known you since
way before you were king
of the world is that she sees
through your façade... she
knows, that deep down
inside, you are not the
Master of the Universe that
you purport to be.”
Lyndon B. Johnson was
famously narcissistic – but
he wasn’t without a sense of
humour. A visiting German
statesman once asked him
if it was true he had been
born in a log cabin. “No,”
he replied breezily. “That
was Abe Lincoln. I was born
in a manger.”
THE WEEK 10 July 2021
Talking points
China: bent on global domination?
Don’t try to “bully” China,
or you’ll get a bloody nose.
That was the Chinese
president Xi Jinping’s
warning to the world on the
centenary of the founding
of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP), said William
Yang in The Independent.
Xi told a flag-waving crowd
that anyone who tries to
“oppress” China will “have
their heads bashed bloody
against a Great Wall of
steel”. The celebrations
“Xi Dada”: a leader in Mao’s mould?
included a “dazzling”
re-enactment of the CCP’s “early struggles”
and its “recent achievements”. They glossed
over the grim era between 1950 and 1970, when
Chairman Mao Zedong’s policies killed millions
and pushed China into “extreme poverty”. Yet
Xi seems increasingly to be a leader in Mao’s
mould: in office since 2012, he has abolished the
two-term limit on the presidency and tightened
ideological control, using technology to monitor
citizens. A government unit pushes a party-
approved version of history, with contrary views “genocide” against the Muslim Uighur minority
demonised as “historical nihilism”. State media
fosters a Mao-style personality cult around “Xi
Dada” or “big daddy”, said Ian Williams in The
Spectator. His approach, though, owes more to
“strident ethnic nationalism” than communism.
Under Xi, China adopts two rather different
tones abroad, said Charles Moore in The Daily
Telegraph. Claiming to pursue “dialogue” and
EU migrants: five million and counting
Shortly after the Brexit vote in 2016, a group
of distraught Europeans met in a Bristol pub to
set up an organisation to lobby for their rights,
said The Economist. They called their outfit
“the3million”, based on the official estimate
of the number of EU citizens living in the UK.
Now it needs “to rebrand”: at the last count,
5.3 million EU nationals living in Britain had
applied for “settled status”. Three months
before the final deadline for applications, on 30
June, at least half a million Italians had applied,
along with 918,270 Romanians and 975,180
Poles. Britain is “much more European than
anybody thought”. For comparison, the 2011
census recorded 1.2 million people of Pakistani
origin, 1.5 million of Indian origin, and 1.9
million black people in the UK. We should
be very pleased to have these new European
migrants, who are mostly young and well-suited
to the job market. This is a “resounding vote of
confidence in Britain’s future”.
In some respects, the EU settlement scheme has
been a “triumph”, said Daniel Trilling in The
Guardian. The vast majority of these
applications have been processed quickly and
successfully. The Home Office, unusually, has
been at pains to show “an open and friendly
face”. But the fact is that millions of Europeans
will henceforth be enmeshed in a “dysfunctional
harmony, it has infiltrated
“hundreds of Western
universities, businesses and
other institutions”. The tone
changes abruptly, though,
if anyone raises questions
about its theft of intellectual
property; its treaty-breaking
assault on the liberties of
Hong Kong; or its “Belt and
Road Initiative” – a
“massive imperial project”
giving it control of transport
routes and natural resources
around the world. Then,
with angry threats and
boycotts, the CCP’s true face is revealed: of a
totalitarian regime bent on global domination.
The West has misread the CCP for 50 years, said
Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. Ever since
Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon first
engaged with it, the “fantasy” was that if we
traded with communist China and gave it a seat
on the UN Security Council, it would “absorb
our values”. It didn’t, as its rising militarism and
show. China now feels strong enough to
challenge the US economically, “and maybe even
prevail”, said The Times. “But Party control will
always be a brake.” A society without freedom
of speech “cannot count on innovation”. A
nation without internal criticism cannot correct
mistakes or fight corruption. “China may be
hailing the Party as the institution that has made
it great.” But the CCP faces an uncertain future.
immigration system that, until now, they had
largely been able to avoid”. The danger is that
many will fall through the cracks: there’s a
backlog of 400,000 settled status applications,
and an unknown number (one estimate puts
it at 150,000) have not yet applied. People in
the latter group will be subject to the “hostile
environment policies” that blight the lives of
migrants from outside the EU. They will lose
the right to work or rent a home, and will be
charged for NHS treatment.
The ramifications of this vast EU influx “will
be profound”, said Harry de Quetteville in
The Daily Telegraph. The total may end up at
around six million, about 9% of the population.
In Boston in Lincolnshire, 31% of people are EU
citizens, as are about one in five Londoners. If
they become UK citizens, which many will, they
will redraw the political map. “We are only
learning just how big a deal European migration
was at the moment we are confronted by life
without it,” said Sarah O’Connor in the FT.
Whole industries have been reshaped by the
constant flow of cheap EU labour. Without new
migrants, in meat processing, for instance –
where EU workers account for over 60% of staff
– employers are already complaining of “acute”
labour shortages. “Learning to live without
them” will reshape British life once again.
 Talking points NEWS 21

Diana’s statue: “kitsch”, yet fitting? Wit &

Everybody in Britain, whether
they know it or not, is familiar
with the work of the sculptor
the form of a playground and a
fountain, in Kensington Gardens
and Hyde Park, “which more
Wisdom
Ian Rank-Broadley, said Simon joyfully and eloquently honour “A censor is a man
Heffer in The Daily Telegraph. her than the statue”. who knows more than
His portrait of the Queen adorns he thinks you ought to.”
our coinage (or at least the share The problem here is the medium, Educator Laurence J. Peter,
of it minted between 1998 and said Mark Hudson in The quoted on iNews.co.uk
2015). He has also produced Independent. Bronze statuary “Political questions are
some impressive pieces of public “belongs to the norms and far too serious to be left
art, such as his Armed Forces standards of another time”. to the politicians.”
Memorial at the National How could a “much-loved Hannah Arendt, quoted in
Arboretum in Staffordshire. His figure whose charm lay in her The Press and Journal
latest work, however, is less than spontaneity and naturalness”
inspired. A statue of Diana, ever really be captured in a “The assumption of good
Princess of Wales, surrounded format we “instinctively faith is dead. What matters
by an “entourage of waifs”, it associate with colonial generals, is not goodness but the
was unveiled last week in the The Princess, plus “waifs” Victorian politicians and fascist appearance of goodness. We
Sunken Garden at Kensington dictators”? Given those are no longer human beings.
Palace on what would have been her 60th limitations, Rank-Broadley has done a pretty We are now angels jostling
birthday. For an artist of Rank-Broadley’s ability good job. His image of “this new serious, to out-angel one another.”
to have turned out “something so banal suggests commanding Diana” gives a sense of the Chimamanda Ngozi
he had been given a serious briefing, presumably woman she might have become, had she lived. Adichie, quoted in
by the Princess’s sons, of what was expected”. Is there “a faint touch of kitsch” to the whole The Guardian
enterprise? Undoubtedly. “But this is, to my
“When I first went into the
Aesthetically, it’s “horrible”, said Rachel mind, by far the best result we could have hoped
movies, Lionel Barrymore
Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Worse still, for under the circumstances.” Some critics have
played my grandfather.
it presents Diana in a mawkish, quasi-messianic said it’s a poor likeness of Diana, and that it
Later he played my father
light “calculated to appeal to the lowest reminds them more of a young Theresa May or
and finally my husband. If
common denominator”. She stands protectively even David Bowie, said Camilla Tominey in The
he had lived, I’m sure I
over the three children, her “arms outspread in Daily Telegraph, but the statue is growing on
would have played his
the pose of a traditional religious Madonna”. me. The opinions that really count, though, are
mother. That’s the way
Yet instead of flowing robes, she sports “a those of Princes William and Harry. If they’re
it is in Hollywood. The
somewhat frumpy 1980s outfit”. It’s all rather happy that the work honours their mother’s
men get younger and the
flat and lifeless, said Rowan Moore in The memory, “it doesn’t really matter” what anyone
women get older.”
Observer. Memorials to Diana already exist in else thinks.
Lillian Gish, quoted
in Forbes
Farewell, Gap: a high street staple falls “A writer’s promise is like
a tiger’s smile.”
Yet another familiar fashion would be astonished to learn Lytton Strachey, quoted
retailer is disappearing from our that the brand was once on The Browser
high streets, said Anthony Kent embraced by high fashion, said
on The Conversation. Last Lisa Armstrong in The Daily “Fear is a reaction. Courage
week, the “once-mighty” Gap Telegraph. In 1992, Anna is a decision.”
revealed that it is closing its Wintour put ten models in Winston Churchill, quoted
81 remaining UK and Ireland white Gap shirts on the cover of in The Daily Telegraph
stores, and moving to online- Vogue. Four years later, Sharon “There has never been
only sales. Founded by two Stone turned up to the Oscars a single tweet that couldn’t
property developers in San in a black Gap turtleneck. Well be replaced with ‘PLEASE
Francisco in 1969, Gap arrived into the noughties, Gap was AUTHENTICATE MY
in Britain in 1987, and in the working with top stylists and EXISTENCE.’”
1990s it seemed unassailable, Gap marketing from the 1990s designers. So where did it go Journalist and screenwriter
said Anna Murphy in The wrong? In retrospect, the rot set Charlie Brooker, quoted
Times. In that era, before Zara brought us fast in 20 years ago, when sales slumped and bean in Vogue
fashion and turned “the British everywoman counters were brought in. Instead of investing in
into a trends junkie”, we flocked to Gap for creativity, their strategy was based on identifying
clothes that were affordable, well-made and successful lines and recycling them. But Gap’s Statistics of the week
“styled to last”. In truth, the “basics” that were wounds were not all self-inflicted. Any brand There are an estimated
the brand’s signature were not dissimilar to lines that defines one generation risks being rejected 1.5 million pet reptiles
at Marks & Spencer – but Gap was just that bit by the next – and when the BabyGap kids grew and amphibians in the
UK, including lizards,
cooler and more on point, with shops styled up, they found little in Gap that spoke to them. snakes, tortoises and
“like Manhattan lofts” and beguiling marketing. salamanders.
The cool people in its ads may have been Gap just failed to keep up with the times, said The Times
wearing dull chinos, but they looked as though Alys Key in The i Paper. The high street isn’t
they might be about “to write a hip-hop song or doomed, but unless you can compete with the Between 1989 and 2017,
Latvia lost 27% of
ride across Mongolia”. online giants on price (as at dirt-cheap Primark),
its population, Lithuania
you have to give people a compelling reason to 22.5% and Bulgaria 21%.
Recent visitors to Gap’s stores, with their racks come through your doors. Gap offered nostalgia
The Guardian
full of discounted clothing covered in naff logos, and dated denim, and it wasn’t enough.

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

22 NEWS Sport
England at the Euros: a likeable leader’s “quiet revolution”
“Le jeu prudent,” was how the French newspaper
L’Équipe described the emotional victory over
Germany which took England to the quarter-final
of the European Championships, said Barney
Ronay in The Guardian. It’s a telling phrase that
encapsulates the sense “not just of caution, but
of a guiding wisdom” which defines both the
England team and its manager. Gareth Southgate’s
conservative philosophy might be dismissed as
timidity by those begging him to unleash “inside-
forward hell”, but in sticking to his guns and
letting his natural caution prevail, the England
manager is leading his own “quiet revolution”.
And those “ruthless but never reckless” instincts
were thoroughly vindicated in Saturday’s 4-0
quarter-final defeat of Ukraine, when the first Southgate: inspiring resilience
priority was once again solidity in defence, said
Dave Kidd in The Sun. Indeed, the fact that England hasn’t con-
ceded a single goal so far in this tournament, (it has still to play
its semi-final against Denmark as The Week goes to press), shows
that Southgate’s team has evolved into a stronger unit than it was
when he led them to the 2018 World Cup semi-final. Ignoring
mounting calls for them to be dropped, he has stuck by players he
trusts in – Raheem Sterling, Harry Kane, Harry Maguire, Jordan
Henderson – while developing “myriad attacking options”. And
now the team reflects the qualities of its patient, likeable leader.
The bright boy who grew up in Crawley, West
Sussex, didn’t seem destined for a football career,
said Paul Byrne in The Mirror. His teachers
thought his future lay in accountancy or
journalism. Even when apprenticed at Crystal
Palace, he was advised by his coach, Alan Smith,
to become a travel agent. However Smith still
made him first-team captain, and Southgate went
on to enjoy a 57-cap international career.
The dominant memory many fans have of him as
a footballer is the missed penalty against Germany
that kept England out of the Euro ’96 final – plus
the Pizza Hut advert it inspired. Yet that failure
was “the making” of Southgate, said Matthew
Syed in The Times: it forged in him the resilience
that he now inspires in others. It is Southgate’s
own “DNA” that has defined England’s Euro
run, said Mark Critchley in The Independent. And in particular
it is his unusual openness to new ideas – evident during his tenure
as manager of Middlesbrough and during his subsequent steward-
ship of the England Under-21s – that has informed his long-term
overhaul of England’s national set-up. Another component of that
DNA is the “decency” and “common sense” that has proved him
right on so many things, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail.
His just reward is to be the first manager to reach consecutive
major tournament semi-finals since Sir Alf Ramsey in 1968.

Tennis: the 18-year-old who has wowed Wimbledon

“A star is born,” said Alyson Rudd in The Sunday showed extraordinary sangfroid when the Romanian
Times. Last Saturday, Emma Raducanu, the world made a dangerous comeback at the start of the
No. 338, became the youngest British woman to second set. Never have I seen such a composed
reach the last 16 at Wimbledon in the open era, by display by a British hopeful – not even the 18-year-
defeating the Romanian Sorana Cîrstea. With her old Andy Murray taking on David Nalbandian in
elegant running forehand and astonishing agility – 2005. This was “goosebump territory”.
she used to ballet dance – the 18-year-old outwitted
her more experienced opponent, and gave “a Last week, Wimbledon’s famous “Henman Hill” was
masterclass in how to harness public adoration”. – temporarily – transformed into “Raducanu Ridge”,
said Tim Lewis in The Observer. But in her match
Raducanu, who sat her A-levels last month, wasn’t against Australian Ajla Tomljanovic on Monday
due to play the tournament at all, said Simon Briggs evening, both expectation and physical exertion took
in The Sunday Telegraph. Her parents had held her their toll. After a long day of waiting, she went on to
back from competing on the tour so she could study. Raducanu: “a star is born” lose the first set and then retired – 3-0 down in the
The panel that issues wild cards granted her one only second – with breathing difficulties. It’s always rash
after her coach Nigel Sears protested against the oversight. Their to heap too much praise on a newcomer, said Riath Al-Samarrai
change of heart has paid off. Raducanu navigated the first week in The Mail on Sunday. But after her performance on Saturday,
without dropping a set. And in her victory over Cîrstea, she people are inevitably wondering just how far she might go.

The youngest chess grandmaster Sporting headlines

He’s just 12 years, five months
old, said Leonard Barden in
The Guardian. But last week,
Abhimanyu Mishra of New
Jersey, who has been playing
the game since he was two and
a half, became the youngest
chess grandmaster of all time.
It’s been a long, hard road for
the prodigy, said Charlotte
Mitchell in the Daily Mail. Chess Mishra: a long hard road
leaves “little time for hobbies”,
and in his single-minded pursuit of his goal,
he’s faced much adversity, including a 35-game
winless streak last year. Still, Mishra seemed to
be prevailing in his “race against time” to
overhaul the record (12 years, seven months)
for youngest grandmaster set 20 years ago by
the Russian Sergey Karjakin. Then the pandemic
struck. There was no way he could achieve the
required string of results and
rankings necessary to attain GM
status if he stayed in the US. So
Mishra’s father bought a one-
way flight to Hungary and
moved the family to Budapest.
What this meant, said Leon
Watson in The Daily Telegraph,
was that Mishra was able to
play virtually non-stop from
April in preparation for the last
hurdle: his third grandmaster
“norm” – a favourable result against a highly
rated competitor. Mishra secured it with a win
against 15-year-old Indian grandmaster, Leon
Luke Mendonca, in the penultimate round of the
Vezerkepzo GM Mix. The passing of chess’s
“Holy Grail” brought praise from Karjakin, who
said he was sad but “philosophic” about losing
his long-held record.
Formula 1 Max Verstappen
won the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Red Bull driver is now 32
points ahead of Mercedes’
Lewis Hamilton, who finished
fourth after tyre problems.
Tour de France Mark
Cavendish took his third stage
win on stage 10, taking his
career total to 33 stages – just
one off Eddy Merckx’s record.
Athletics Norwegian Karsten
Warholm broke the 400m
hurdle world record in his
very first race of the outdoor
season in front of a home
crowd in Oslo. His 46.70sec
beat the previous record, held
by Kevin Young for 29 years,
by 0.08sec.

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 LETTERS
Pick of the week’s correspondence
We must pay for justice
To the Financial Times
It’s heartening that the FT is
raising the alarm over the
criminal justice system. Over
the past decade, the Govern-
ment closed half the courts in
England and Wales before
technology was in place to
bridge the gap. News that five
Nightingale courts are to close,
despite a backlog, suggests
lessons have not been learnt.
Recruiting more police
officers, stiffer sentencing and
rhetoric about being tough on
crime is meaningless without
investment across the justice
system, including for legal aid.
And it’s not just the criminal
courts: backlogs are engulfing
the Small Claims Court and the
Coroner’s Court, where a
growing number of bereaved
families are waiting more than
a year for an inquest. People
living below the poverty line
are regularly denied legal aid
by too stringent a means test,
and many others face legal
issues such as in housing,
employment and family law,
with no recourse because of
cuts to legal aid. If the belief
becomes widespread that there
is little chance of people
enforcing or protecting their
rights, there is little incentive
for less scrupulous people to
comply with their legal
obligations, which is highly
damaging to the rule of law.
I. Stephanie Boyce, president,
Law Society of England and
Wales, London
The blue-eyed monster
To The Times
I share Richard Morrison’s
frustration with the seemingly
interminable intrusion of
cultural identity politics into
the arts, but sometimes it is
useful to recall how things used
to be. My first experience of
Shakespeare was when, aged
17, I saw a production of
Othello by the Royal
Shakespeare Company in
1972. The lead was played by
a man with blue eyes, blacked
up and spouting a ridiculous
faux West Indian accent. It is
the worst thing I have ever seen
in a theatre. We will not see
anything like this again, and
one day the culture wars will
resolve. In the meantime, we
should all try to be patient
and engage constructively.
Jon Talbot, Chester
● Letters have been edited
23
Exchange of the week Levelling up starts young
To The Daily Telegraph
England and the Union Since founding The Big Issue,
I have spent nearly 30 years
To The Times supporting more than 100,000
When Nelson signalled to the fleet before the Battle of vulnerable people. I believe
Trafalgar that “England expects that every man will do his that prevention is the key to
duty”, he, like many before and since, confused England with unpicking our social problems,
the United Kingdom, and did so notwithstanding that the fleet so to lift people out of poverty
was manned predominantly by Irish and Scots. The confusion permanently I have introduced
of the two reflects the aggressive part that England played in a Wellbeing of Future
the subjugation of Wales, Ireland and, in some respects, the Generations Bill. To take this
Scots to forge the Union: a part that needs to be understood bill through Parliament, I have
by those who strive to preserve the Union. joined forces with the
Iain Milligan QC, author of Sovereign of the Isles: How the Conservative MP Simon Fell.
Crown won the British Isles Despite the millions spent
every year, people are not
To The Times getting out of poverty. It costs
I suspect that Iain Milligan QC is placing more political weight taxpayers an average £1m to
on a technical issue than it will bear. When Nelson drafted his produce one Big Issue vendor,
signal he used the word “confides”. His signal lieutenant told because 80% of them grew up
him that there was no group in the signal book for the word, in local authority care, which
and offered “expects” instead: he was still obliged to spell out costs £15,000 per person per
D-U-T-Y with a two-flag hoist for each letter. “England” was month. Prevention is the route
in the vocabulary, “Britain” was probably not. to real social mobility. My
Captain Richard Channon, RN, Stoke by Nayland, Suffolk co-sponsor knows that this
Government’s ambitious
Those left behind is just 1.5 miles. Yet carmakers levelling-up agenda will only
To The Guardian insist on developing huge EVs be achieved through long-term
Your report (“Ministers plan to account for larger batteries – solutions. Not only does
to end social distancing in which frankly wouldn’t be prevention make sound
England on 19 July”) should required if they just focused economic sense, it is also at the
be a cause for dismay for a instead on making smaller, top of voters’ concerns.
large group of vulnerable lighter vehicles. Lord Bird, editor-in-chief, The
people who, because they are If car companies stopped Big Issue, London
immunocompromised, have thinking about how to make
failed to raise a significant a profit and started thinking A lethal cure
antibody response despite instead about what their To The Guardian
having received two doses of customers actually want, I was in hospital having my
a Covid-19 vaccine. they’d be able to be much more appendix out when I got an
This applies to patients innovative when it comes to attack of hiccups. I asked a
receiving immunosuppressant their actual design, enabling nurse if there was any cure.
treatment for autoimmune lighter, more efficient models “Not really,” she said, “it will
diseases and cancers, and the which get people where they eventually go away on its own.
recipients of organ transplants. need to go using much smaller We recently had a patient who
A great many of those people batteries. This would not only had hiccups for four days.” So
will not presently be aware be more cost-effective for the what did they do to make it
that they may not be protected manufacturer and customer, stop? “Nothing, really,” she
by the vaccine. All of us who but far more environmentally assured me airily, “he just
have failed – knowingly or sustainable, which is what it’s died.” My own hiccups
unknowingly – to respond to all about. stopped instantly.
the vaccine will be at increased Mark Simon, chief technical Brian Shuel, London
risk if the rest of the popula- officer, Page-Roberts
tion cease social distancing and Automotive
stop wearing face masks. Until
such time as our predicament is Creative identity
more widely recognised and a To The Times
solution can be found, we shall Rachel Campbell-Johnston
have to run that risk or revert describes the newly unveiled
to self-exclusion from society. Diana statue as aesthetically
Pam Dean, Flamstead, horrible, and says it would
Hertfordshire have been much better if the
sculptor had been a woman
Battery overkill instead of a middle-aged
To The Independent white male.
The [car] industry’s increasing Maybe Michelangelo’s
obsession with gigafactories statue of David wouldn’t
speaks to range anxiety and the have been so rubbish if the “Cheer up. Very soon it will be the
broader problem of electric sculptor had been Jewish. end of not going to school and the
start of not going on holiday.”
vehicle (EV) battery scale. The Paul Rubert, Cheadle,
average car journey in the UK Greater Manchester © MATT/THE TELEGRAPH
10 July 2021 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
All In It Together
by Alwyn Turner
Profile 376pp £20
The Week Bookshop £16.99
This hugely enjoyable book is the
fourth instalment of Alwyn Turner’s
series looking at Britain’s recent past,
said Craig Brown in The Mail on
Sunday. Having previously published
chronicles of the 1970s, 1980s and
1990s, “he has now turned his Pippa Middleton’s big moment: “half-forgotten”
attention to the first 15 or so years of
the 21st century”. The events he drags us back to didn’t happen
long ago, but many already seem “half-forgotten”. The
millennium bug, Pippa Middleton’s bottom, the dodgy dossier,
Cleggmania – they all “resonate like the songs of yesteryear”.
Turner is “up there with the best” writers of contemporary
history, and here, as previously, he strikes a balance between
entertaining his readers and making them think. While his
narrative “zings along”, he ensures it’s more than a series of
“unrelated events” by interweaving various themes – including
Britain’s “increasingly troubled relationship with its past”, and
the growing disconnect between the public and politicians.
Turner’s particular skill is to alight on an event which seems
“utterly trivial”, but which illustrates one of his larger arguments, to see the lineaments “of our present times”.
25
said Dominic Sandbrook in The Sunday
Times. For example, he picks out John
Sergeant’s improbably long run on
Strictly Come Dancing in 2008 –
against the wishes of the judges – as
exemplifying a growing distrust of
“experts”. Today the idea is common-
place, but only Turner would have
“thought to look for it on Strictly”. An
excellent portrait of the comedian Roy
“Chubby” Brown – who was effectively
blacklisted by mainstream TV, but who
made millions from his DVDs and sell-
out shows – is used to explain many of
the tendencies that led to Brexit.
This book is a “fluent enough trot
over the ground”, said Quentin Letts in
The Times. But it’s pretty superficial. Turner “regurgitates some
of the political and pop-cultural events” of the Blair, Brown and
Cameron years. Immigration, the benefits system, child abuse –
they’re all “covered in breezy prose”. “When telling quotations
are needed, they are lifted from television shows.” That’s unfair,
said Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian: this is not just a dive into
the digital newspaper archives. With “great skill”, Turner pulls
out “plums from the recent past” that make sense of it all. The
general mood is familiar, but the details seem “downright
implausible”. Did George Galloway really do a kitten impression
on Celebrity Big Brother? Did Robert Kilroy-Silk actually once
consider himself a serious politician? It’s a book that allows you

Cricketing Lives
by Richard H. Thomas
Reaktion Books 440pp £20
The Week Bookshop £16.99
In this absorbing book, Richard H. Thomas
tells the “long and involved” history of cricket
through some of its most colourful characters,
said Marcus Berkmann in The Spectator. Luckily
for him – and for us – the sport has always
attracted eccentrics, from oddballs such as W.G.
Grace (right) to Geoffrey Boycott, to the many
less familiar figures in Thomas’s account. One
such figure is Wilf Wooller, who captained
Glamorgan to the championship in 1948 and later became the club’s president.
In the latter guise, Thomas portrays him as a “terrifying figure”, prowling the
boundary in his sports jackets and brown suede shoes, often commandeering the
public address system to denounce the negative tactics of opposing teams.
“Drinkers, adventurers and shaggers abound” in these pages, said Patrick
Kidd in The Critic. A century ago, the Hon. Lionel Tennyson (grandson of the
poet laureate) found himself summoned to make his Test debut for England the
next day while “deep into a night at the Embassy Club on Bond Street”. He
struck an extravagant bet with one of his companions that he would score a
half-century – and duly made 74. And it’s not just “Boys’ Own stories”: Thomas
doesn’t neglect the “great female legends of cricket”. Eileen Ash, an England
player in the 1940s (who is still alive, aged 109), “flew in a Tiger Moth on her
100th birthday and kept one of Don Bradman’s bats by her bed to repel
burglars”. Nancy Doyle, the “volcanic” head cook at Lord’s, once responded to
Mike Brearley’s request for lighter fare than steak and kidney pudding by telling
England’s then captain: “You worry about the f***ing cricket, and I’ll worry
about the f***ing food.” Heavy on research but light in touch, this is a book
with something for everyone – “even those who find the game dull”.
To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm
Novel of the week
Animal
by Lisa Taddeo
Bloomsbury 336pp £16.99
The Week Bookshop £13.99
Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women – an “intimate
investigation” of female sexuality in America –
was the “biggest publishing sensation of 2019”,
said Madeleine Feeny in the London Evening
Standard. As a result, “all eyes are trained” on
Taddeo’s debut novel, Animal. And it proves
to be a dark, carnal tale, “drenched in sex and
blood”. It begins with Joan, the beautiful but
damaged narrator, driving cross-country to Los
Angeles and renting a ramshackle three-storey
house up Topanga Canyon. Sex, rape and
murder ensue: “men hunt women, women hunt
men, and damaged women hunt one another”.
Taddeo’s writing can be “exceptionally
good”, said Sandra Newman in The Guardian.
But the “careening outlandishness” of the plot
seems at odds with the book’s “serious content”:
much of the incident is “gratuitously bizarre and
seedy”. It rather grew on me, said Melissa
Katsoulis in The Times. Taddeo is attempting
something radical, which is “flipping American
Psycho for the #MeToo generation”. She hasn’t
quite found her fictional stride, but she has the
“guts and big ideas to become something great”.

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

26 ARTS Drama & Podcasts
Theatre: three musical treats
“Who would have thought that pleasure. And the production
one of the highlights of the summer conveys its ecological message
would be watching Les Dennis without losing any of the play’s
fondle Michael Ball?” These two magic and humour. The only “off-
“old stagers” are playing husband note” comes at the end, in the
and wife in the gloriously revived form of a superfluous epilogue
musical Hairspray – and they on climate and sustainability, said
have a huge amount of fun with Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But
their vaudeville-style duet it is soon “swallowed up by a
celebrating marital bliss, (You’re) rousing last song”. This is first-rate
Timeless to Me, said Clive Davis summer Shakespeare, made “all
in The Times. But the pair are just the more spellbinding for the
one of the attractions. The whole greater stage of the natural world
show – the tale of Tracy, a tubby around us” (until 24 July).
girl from Baltimore who is
determined to become a dancer on Stephen Sondheim’s “cruel, clever
a “cringingly cute” TV dance show and delectable” 1973 musical A
– is a high camp triumph. The Little Night Music is “piercingly
songs “rock with genuine bluesy Dennis and Ball in Hairspray: one of the highlights of the summer well done here” in a collaboration
energy”, the choreography is “slick between Leeds Playhouse and
yet soulful”, and the racial theme is handled deftly. The cavernous Opera North, said Sam Marlowe in The Times. Directed by James
Coliseum is a tough space for a musical, but this five-star romp, Brining, the production brims with “rapturous romance”, without
with its infectious music and madcap routines, easily fills it. “You dulling the musical’s “serrated edge”. The singing is superb –
really would have to be in a terminal state of humourlessness not “rich, natural and precise” – and the acting just as impressive.
to enjoy” the production (until 29 September). Stephanie Corley as Desiree makes “desolate, devastating work”
of the show’s most famous number, Send in the Clowns. And as
Staged in The Watermill Theatre’s woodland gardens in Newbury Madam Armfeldt, former lover of kings and counts, Josephine
– weeping willows, rippling streams, passing ducks – Paul Hart’s Barstow is as “arch, sharp and hilarious as anything you’ll find in
production of As You Like It is a “bucolic delight”, said Judi the best Oscar Wilde production”, said Mark Brown in The Daily
Herman on What’s On Stage. The cast of actor-musicians is Telegraph. This is a “true gem” of a show – an exceptional
excellent, and include Katherine Jack as a “beautifully calibrated achievement, “pitched wonderfully between French sex comedy
and intelligent” Rosalind. “Spine-tingling” arrangements of folk and Chekhovian existentialism”. It’s a production that could
and pop songs (Taylor Swift, The Beach Boys) add to the “grace stages anywhere in the world” (until 17 July).

Podcasts... from racism in football to self-driving cars

Any politician thinking of weighing a fictional US vice-president. And
in on the question of the England Rosamund Pike is terrific as Edith
football team “taking the knee” – “smart, irreverent and sardonic”.
should first listen to TalkSport’s The podcast’s subtitle is The
Coming in From The Cold, said Untold True-ish Story of America’s
Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. Secret First Female President. But
This “moving and informative” it is based on fact and, with no
series, presented by Jessica creaking sound effects at all, it
Creighton, is a remarkable slice of makes for “compulsive” listening.
social and cultural history, which “I was not the first female
tells the story “of modern England president,” says Edith, modestly.
through the prism” of its black “I was a patriot who helped the
professional footballers. “Booing country stay together while the
one of your own players... are you president took a little nap.”
expecting him to play better,” asks
the former England striker Emile “No podcast is more interesting,
Heskey, his voice “cracking with more impishly good fun, more
exasperated incredulity”. Heskey Cole’s experiences are examined in Coming in From The Cold beautifully produced” than
is referring to Ashley Cole. But, Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas-filled
depressingly, he could probably be talking about any of the show Revisionist History, said James Marriott in The Times.
players profiled here, from the Victorian goalie Arthur Wharton In fact anyone who has not listened to the episodes The King of
and Walter Tull in the 1910s, to more recent stars such as Clyde Tears (on country music), The Hug Heard Round the World
Best, John Barnes, Ian Wright and Raheem Sterling. Their stories (on Sammy Davis Jr. and Richard Nixon), A Good Walk Spoiled
are “engaging” and “often poignant”, and this “engrossing” (on the evils of golf) and Hallelujah (on the two kinds of genius)
series does them proud. is “hereby banned from reading this column” until they have
gone away and “done their homework”. Gladwell’s last series
I tend to find audio drama a “struggle”, with its “creaking sound was “the only duff one so far” – but the new series, the sixth,
effects” and excess of exposition, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. has just begun, and he’s back on top form with an episode on
© TRISTRAM KENTON

But Edith!, a comedy-drama about President Woodrow Wilson’s driverless cars. Much of the fun arises from Gladwell “gleefully
wife, who took over running the White House in 1919 after he experimenting” with Google’s self-driving car, Waymo: throwing
suffered a stroke, is a treat. The writing is “fast and fun”, with beach balls at it, racing it, and riding around in it while abusing
clear shades of Veep, Armando Iannucci’s TV comedy hit about learner drivers. “It’s good to have him back.”

THE WEEK 10 July 2021


Films to stream
School and college reunions
were a popular theme in films
during the 1980s and 1990s,
especially in the US. Here are
five that have reunions as
their focus:
The Big Chill As in John
Sayles’s similar Return of
the Secaucus Seven (1979),
memories of 1960s student
activism haunt Lawrence
Kasdan’s intimate comedy-
drama from 1983 about
seven former college friends
who gather for a comrade’s
funeral. The cast includes
Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum
and William Hurt.
Peggy Sue Got Married
Francis Ford Coppola’s
comedy from 1986 is an
intriguing, touching film
about a woman who gets
a second chance at youth.
Kathleen Turner turns in a
brilliant performance as a
jaded 42-year-old who faints
at her school reunion and
wakes up a teenager again.
Beautiful Girls Directed
by Ted Demme, this comedy-
drama from 1996 centres
on a group of male friends
brought together at a ten-year
school reunion, at a time
when they are all struggling
with anxieties about romantic
commitment. The starry cast
includes Timothy Hutton,
Uma Thurman, Matt Dillon
and Natalie Portman.
Grosse Pointe Blank
George Armitage’s hip,
noirish black comedy from
1997 stars John Cusack as
a disillusioned hitman who
revisits the Detroit suburb of
THE FILMS ARE AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE PLAY (EXCEPT BEAUTIFUL GIRLS), APPLE TV AND AMAZON
Grosse Pointe to do one last
job, and attend a high-school
reunion where he hopes to
win back the girl he jilted on
prom night (Minnie Driver).
Romy and Michele’s High
School Reunion Lisa
Kudrow and Mira Sorvino
bring charming chemistry to
this delightfully silly cult hit
from 1997 about two ditzy
Valley Girls who were bullied
by the “A group” at school,
and so invent fake CVs in an
effort to impress their former
classmates at a ten-year
school reunion.
Film & TV
New releases
Another Round
Dir: Thomas Vinterberg (1hr 56mins) (12A)
★★★★
Winner of an Oscar for best international
feature, this tragicomedy is director Thomas
Vinterberg’s finest film since Festen (1998),
said Mark Kermode in The Observer. Mads
Mikkelsen plays a high-school teacher and
reformed hellraiser who is in the throes of
a mid-life crisis. Inspired by the notion –
attributed to the real-life psychiatrist Finn
Skårderud – that all humans are born a tiny bit
alcohol deficient, he and three male colleagues
start drinking secretly at work, hoping to “learn
to live again”. They treat their drinking as a
scientific experiment, with “severe and absurd”
rules, and at first they amaze themselves, their
pupils and their wives with their new-found
lucidity, enthusiasm and spontaneity. But they
struggle to limit their consumption, and are
soon “spiralling towards self-destruction”.
Another Round’s take on alcohol struck me as
confused, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.
By the end, health has been wrecked, careers
trashed, marital beds urinated in. But
Vinterberg also seems to want to upend “liberal
pieties about excessive drinking being bad”. He
has said that the tragic death of his daughter,
Ida, in a car crash four days into filming led
him to emphasise the story’s life-affirming
aspect. The film is certainly ambivalent, said
Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent – but to
me that feels “honest”. Mikkelsen embodies the
duality in a towering performance drawing on
the inscrutability that has made him such a
great Hollywood villain. Even early on, when
he is enthusing to his pupils about Churchill’s
boozing, you wonder if he knows his quest is
doomed. And yet he is quite sublime in his final
scene, when, egged on by his students’ cheers,
he dances in the rain, as graceful as Gene Kelly
– but extremely drunk. In cinemas.
Freaky
Dir: Christopher Landon (1hr 43mins) (15)
★★★★
Freaky Friday meets Friday the 13th in this
Hemingway: another brilliant series from Ken Burns
Documentary-makers Ken Burns
and Lynn Novick have taken on
many monumental American
subjects, from Jefferson to jazz.
Their latest is Ernest Hemingway,
the most influential US writer of
the 20th century, said Camilla
Long in The Sunday Times. Their
“signature skill” – turning still
images into “something that feels
like a newsreel” – works well
here, as there are many wonderful
photos of the man and his milieu A “moreish” documentary as twins; and that he blamed her
to draw on, and the six-part series
is “extraordinarily moreish”. It positively packs
in high-quality information, though it only
skims over the writer’s “rabid violence, his
racism, his disgusting treatment of women”.
27
Kathryn Newton in the “splatter-fest” Freaky
ebullient “splatter-fest”, said James Dyer in
Empire. The film’s “knowingly daft” plot
involves a shy, bullied small-town teenager,
Millie (Kathryn Newton), who swaps bodies
with a serial killer, the Blissfield Butcher (Vince
Vaughn), when he attacks her with an Aztec
dagger he doesn’t know to be enchanted. Now
appearing as a hulking man whose photofit is
a constant presence on the news, Millie must
evade the police, convince her friends of her
predicament and retrieve the dagger to reverse
the curse before it sticks. Meanwhile, the killer
in Millie’s body takes brutal revenge on her
persecutors at school, including leering jocks
and a creepy male teacher.
For a “crowd-pleaser” with a “gimmicky”
premise, Freaky is surprisingly “substantial”,
said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian – as
unrestrained in its “exploration of gender and
sexuality” as in its “inventively gnarly” murder
scenes. Newton brilliantly conveys the killer’s
outrage on learning how it feels to be a victim
of everyday male aggression. And Vaughn’s
turn as Millie is beautifully observed, and
“moving” too – notably when she finally dares
to tell a jock about her crush on him, and,
despite her “masculine shell”, the pair kiss. I’m
afraid I found Vaughn’s performance merely
“camp”, said Kevin Maher in The Times, and
the film too “schematic”. Its novelty fun soon
wears off, leaving only a series of grizzly
murders to keep us watching. In cinemas.
Later “readings of
Hemingway’s work have
sometimes accused him of
misogyny and homophobia”,
said Rebecca Nicholson in The
Guardian. The series accepts
those readings, while attempting
“to craft a story that may explain
this ‘brute, and lover, and man
about town’”. We learn, for
instance, that his mother liked to
dress him and one of his sisters
for his father’s unhappiness. This
is a gripping series, with contributions from the
likes of Edna O’Brien, and top flight actors
(including Jeff Daniels and Meryl Streep)
reading from his letters and books.
10 July 2021 THE WEEK
28 Auctions

A LIFETIME’S PASSION:
PROPERTY FROM THE FELL COLLECTION

LIVE ONLINE AUCTION

WEDNESDAY 21 JULY 2021

VIEWING BY APPOINTMENT
Friday 16 July (10am-5pm)
Sunday 18 July (10am-4pm)
Monday 19 & Tuesday 20 July (10am-5pm)
To book an appointment please email info@dreweatts.com.

ENQUIRIES
Joe Robinson:
+44 (0) 1635 553 553 | info@dreweatts.com
Dreweatts, Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE
Catalogue and free online bidding: dreweatts.com

In collaboration with

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or call Henry Haselock 020 3890 3900
 Art ARTS 29
Exhibition of the week Gustave Moreau: The Fables
Waddesdon Manor, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire (01296-820414, waddesdon.org.uk). Until 17 October
The French symbolist painter is an allegory of Fable as a woman
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) has “flying across the sky on the back
never regained the “cult status” of a hippogriff”. Another has “an
that he had in his lifetime, said angry dragon with more tails than
Maev Kennedy in The Art an octopus has legs” crashing
Newspaper. His work is rarely through a fence to devour a
exhibited today, and if he is man hiding in a tree. Elsewhere,
remembered at all, it is as Moreau depicts a fable in which a
a histrionic and “feverish” figure. man falls in love with his cat and
His palette, one critic complained, somehow manages to turn her into
was like that of a jeweller “drunk a woman. After some “furious
on colour”’; and no scene was lovemaking”, she leaps from bed
complete without a flourish of the to chase a mouse across the room.
fantastical – with monsters, deities The protagonist of this “creepy”
or demons. Yet in his time, he was tale is shown cowering in the
considered “a visionary sage” sheets like “a child watching a
who taught and greatly influenced horror movie”. Yet eccentric
the likes of Henri Matisse. Now, a though they are, The Fables
small show at Waddesdon Manor, represent “a remarkable body of
a National Trust home formerly work”. These pictures teem with
owned by the Rothschild family, “blues that throb like powdered
seeks to explain why. The sapphires, reds that glow like
exhibition brings together the rubies, gold that gleams like an
surviving fragments of a series of Australian nugget” – exceeding
watercolours Moreau created to all expectations of what can be
illustrate the fables of the 17th achieved with watercolours. His
century poet Jean de La Fontaine. depictions of animals are
When first exhibited, this cycle “beautifully observed”: Moreau
created a sensation: George captures an elephant frightened
Bernard Shaw, for one, remarked by a mouse and a “screaming
that it entitled Moreau “to rank The monkey and the dolphin (1879): “beautifully observed” monkey” riding “on the back
with Delacroix and Burne-Jones”. of a speeding dolphin” more
Created between the 1870s and the 1880s, the series of 64 believably than you might think possible.
pictures was sold on the original owner’s death and then split:
about half of the collection was “looted by the Nazis”, and most You don’t need to be familiar with La Fontaine’s fables to marvel
of it has never been recovered. This is the first time that almost all at Moreau’s bizarre inventiveness, his breadth and his originality,
the remaining pictures have been shown in public together for said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Each picture is “a
more than a century. Can it restore Moreau’s reputation? miniature world unto itself”: Moreau paints the Senate of Ancient
Rome, “quasi-Dutch and Shakespearean scenes”, and even
I approached this show with some “trepidation”, said Waldemar “radiant landscapes reminiscent of Turner”. “Looking at these
Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Moreau’s reputation for artistic dream-worlds is like passing through a fairy-tale forest thick with
“onanism” is well deserved, and the works in this exhibition magic and flickering, supernatural lights.” What an “intoxicating
make few concessions to subtlety. The first image we encounter vision” Moreau’s was. And “what an extraordinary show this is”.

News from the art world

The Flintstones house An art thief’s regrets
The owner of a “controversial Flintstones- The man who stole three paintings, including
themed house” has settled a long-running masterpieces by Picasso and Mondrian, from
lawsuit against her local authority, says The Greece’s National Gallery nine years ago
Guardian. The media magnate Florence has confessed, says Helen Stoilas in The
Fang, now retired, lives in a brightly coloured Art Newspaper. The works were recovered
experimental house built by the architect last week and the culprit, it turned out, was
William Nicholson in 1976 in Hillsborough, in a 49-year-old builder named George
the suburbs of San Francisco. It is popularly Sarmantzopoulos. A self-confessed “art
known as the “Flintstones house” after the freak”, he had no intention to sell the works,
1960s cartoon. Fang incurred the wrath of only an intense desire to own them. “These
© PRIVATE COLLECTION; CAYCE CLIFFORD/GUARDIAN/EYEVINE

the local council when she took the theme
one step further by installing statues of Fred
and Wilma Flintstone, along with various
dinosaurs. The town took her to court,
accusing her of causing a “public nuisance”.
Authorities in Hillsborough described
Fang’s project as an “eyesore”, arguing Fang’s dinosaurs: a “public nuisance”?
that residents are obliged to obtain a permit
before erecting any sort of sculpture. Fang counter-sued, citing
her property rights. Under the terms of the settlement, she will
drop her lawsuit and apply for the necessary building permits.
In return, Hillsborough will pay her $125,000.
thoughts tormented me for about two years
and led me to make the biggest mistake of
my life,” Sarmantzopoulos told police. For
six months before the 2012 heist, he would
sit in the gallery for hours, observing the
guards and the security arrangements,
before eventually carrying out the robbery
in seven minutes late at night. Panicked by
reports that the authorities were close to solving the case earlier
this year, he gave himself up, expressing remorse and leading
police to the remote ravine where he had hidden the paintings.
The robbery was “the biggest regret of my life”, he said.

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

30 The List
Best books… Sasha Swire Television
The journalist and author chooses her six favourite diaries, from politics to Programmes
nature. Her Sunday Times bestseller, Diary of an MP’s Wife (Abacus £9.99) Amol Rajan Interviews
is out now in paperback Sundar Pichai In the first
episode of a new series, the
BBC’s media editor meets the
Henry “Chips” Channon: I’m as much a nature writer as including similarities in how
CEO of Alphabet and its subsi-
The Diaries (Volume 1) a diarist, so share Nicolson’s people responded to the crisis. diary Google at his Silicon
1918-38 edited by Simon concentrations and interests. Valley headquarters. Mon
Heffer, 2021 (Hutchinson Bee Journal by Sean 12 July, BBC2 21:00 (60mins).
£35). The best political diaries Diaries: In Power by Alan Borodale, 2012 (Vintage
are witty, waspish, snobbish Clark, 1994 (Phoenix, out of £9.99). This poem-journal This Way Up Aisling Bea’s
and gossipy. And they are print). Like Chips, Clark had chronicles the life of the hive, bittersweet comedy returns
often written by people not the flaws of vanity and lechery from the collection of a small for a second season. Aine’s
necessarily at the heart of and crashing snobbery, but he nucleus to the capture of a excitement mounts ahead of a
date with her student’s father
power, but at its edge. Chips was a natural writer of people, swarm two years later. As an
(Tobias Menzies). Wed 14 July,
Channon is an absolute master places and politics. Penned amateur beekeeper, I’ve found C4 22:00 (30mins).
at the form. His diaries are during a time when the bad it to be something of a bible.
delicious, dangerous and behaviour of a politician was Carlos Ghosn: The Last
utterly compulsive. either ignored or dismissed. Notes from Walnut Tree Flight Storyville charts the
Farm by Roger Deakin, 2009 rise and spectacular fall of
The Harold Nicolson The Diary of Samuel Pepys, (Penguin £9.99). A journal the former Nissan CEO, and
Diaries, 1966 (W&N £12.99). 1825 (Everyman £18.99). The of sorts, but more a medley his audacious escape from
Nicolson was an MP and a diary of the 17th century naval of musings, feelings and Japan. Wed 14 July, BBC4
22:00 (100mins).
diplomat married to the poet administrator is perhaps the observations about the natural
and gardener Vita Sackville- most famous of them all. world of rural Suffolk. Deakin Our NHS: A Hidden History
West. Both were gay but Pepys’s writings reveal how had a unique way of painting Historian David Olusoga hears
devoted to each other and their life under the bubonic plague the humblest of scenes with the the stories of some of the
famous garden at Sissinghurst. mirrors our own pandemic, richest of prose. health workers from overseas
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk who have had a transformative
effect on the NHS. Thur 15
July, BBC1 21:00 (60mins).
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing
Showing now Films
Darkest Hour (2017) Gary
After some delay, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new Oldman won an Oscar for his
musical Cinderella – as retold by Oscar- portrayal of Winston Churchill
winning screenwriter Emerald Fennell – has in this rousing historical
opened. Expect “lavish family entertainment” drama. Sat 10 July, BBC1
with a few comic nods to issues of the day (Daily 19:35 (120mins).
Telegraph). Until 13 February 2022, Gillian
Lynne Theatre, Drury Lane, London WC2 Trumbo (2015) Biopic about
(andrewlloydwebberscinderella.com). the screenwriter Dalton
Trumbo, who fell foul of the
House Un-American Activities
Notes on Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Committee in Cold War-era
powerful reflection on family, love and loss, is Hollywood. Bryan Cranston
adapted for the stage as part of the Manchester stars. Sat 10 July, BBC2
International Festival. Until 17 July, Exchange Uche Abuah in Notes on Grief 01:05 (124mins).
Auditorium, Manchester Central (mif.co.uk);
also available to watch online. shows, Paradise has writer and recording artist Gravity (2013) After flying
Kae Tempest reimagining Sophocles’s debris destroys their shuttle,
Everyday objects – from crockery to hardware an astronaut and a medical
Philoctetes, with an all-female cast. Ian Rickson engineer find themselves
– are displayed alongside the paintings, directs. 4 August-11 September, National alone and tethered to each
reliefs, prints and drawings they inspired in Theatre, London SE1 (nationaltheatre.org.uk). other in Alfonso Cuarón’s
Ben Nicholson: From the Studio. Until atmospheric space drama. Tue
24 October, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester Book early for the world premiere of Double 13 July, BBC1 20:35 (88mins).
(pallant.org.uk). Murder, a double bill of new pieces by the
acclaimed choreographer Hofesh Shechter and
Book now his company. 14-18 September, Sadler’s Wells, Coming up online
Set to be one of the summer’s most talked-about London EC1 (sadlerswells.com). Even as venues reopen,
livestream events continue:
The Archers: what happened last week Kings Place hosts The Guilty
Feminist, Deborah Frances-
When Elizabeth and Vince’s holiday booking gets cancelled, they decide on a staycation at Lower
White’s hit podcast; 19:30, 12
© ROCK ROSE PHOTOGRAPHY; TRISTRAM KENTON

Loxley, to Freddie’s dismay. After a work party, Lily sleeps with her colleague Sol. She confides in
Rex about her mixed feelings – she had fun with Sol, but feels guilty about being unfaithful to Russ July (kingsplace.co.uk). Retail
and thinks she should come clean. Meanwhile, Russ receives his decree absolute and can’t wait to guru Mary Portas discusses
tell Lily that he is finally divorced. Vince’s mother Iris comes to visit Lower Loxley, making a big How To Thrive in the New
impression on everyone, and warns Elizabeth how soft-hearted Vince is. Lily is aghast to see Sol Kindness Economy, her
at the drive-in movie night, but he knows she has a partner and hopes they can be friends. Later, take on how firms will or
Russ shares his news with Lily and shows her a portrait he has made of her – overwhelmed, she should behave in the post-
decides to keep quiet about her indiscretion. She wonders if they should get married, but Russ pandemic world; 18:30, 20
says they don’t need to. Elizabeth and Vince talk about the week’s goings-on and she tells him she July (howtoacademy.com).
loves him, but can’t live with him; he’s happy with that.

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

32 Best properties
Houses with long drives
Cumbria:

▲
Appletree Estate,
Newby, Penrith. This
family home and
holiday letting
business in the Eden
Valley is accessed by
a private driveway
and set in generous
gardens with superb
views to the Pennines.
The adjacent barn is
converted into 2 flats:
a 1-bed on the
ground floor and a
3-bed upstairs, along
with a 1-bed Garden
Cottage on the
grounds, all used as
successful holiday
lets. Appletree
cottage: main suite,
3 further beds, family
bath, kitchen, 2
receps, utility, garage,
stores. £895,000;
Fine & Country
(01768-869007).

▲ Devon: Natson Mill, Bow. Tucked away off a private road, this former mill
with traditional Devon longhouse and stone cottage is in a courtyard setting
with extensive outbuildings, nestled on its own land on the banks of the River
Yeo. 4-bed farmhouse, 2-bed mill cottage, arboretum, orchard, variety of
outbuildings, 14.5 acres. £975,000; Fox Grant (01722-782727).

Carmarthenshire:
▲

Clearbrook Hall,
Llanarthney, Carmarthen.
Located in 45 acres of
serene and stunning
countryside, this stately
Georgian house and 2 semi-
detached, Grade II 3-bed
cottages sit in an elevated
position surrounded by
landscaped gardens,
managed woodland,
meadows and pastures.
Main house: 5 suites, 6
receps. Large paddocks,
1-acre stocked pond, walled
garden with tennis court,
large outdoor swimming
pool, summer house,
2 sand schools, 3 stables,
manège, plus additional
outbuildings. OIEO £1.5m;
Fine & Country (01834-
862138).

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

on the market 33

▲ Cornwall: Hustyn Gate, Burlawn, Wadebridge.

Sympathetically restored, this idyllic farmhouse has
a 2-bed annexe. Main suite, 5 further beds, 3 further
baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, utility,
shower, boot room, summerhouse, gardens, 2.8 acres.
£1.15m; John Bray & Partners (01208-862601).

Co Durham: The Old Vicarage, Hunstanworth.

▲
An imposing Grade II former vicarage set in beautiful
grounds. Main suite, 4 further beds, family bath,
kitchen/breakfast room, 4 receps, hall, pantry, scullery,
garden room, boot room, store, 2 WCs, coach house
with carriage room and stable, hayloft, groom’s room,
formal gardens, orchard, summerhouse, wood. OIEO
£1m; Finest Properties (01434-622234).

Lincolnshire: Mercia Devon: Marley

▲
▲

Lodge, Spalding. Set House, Rattery, South

back from the road and Brent. Located in one
with an in-and-out of Devon’s oldest
formal carriage villages, on the old
driveway, this double- travellers road from
fronted Grade II Kingsbridge to Bristol,
Victorian town house this Grade II*
needs full modernisation. Georgian mansion, set
The house retains many in extensive grounds,
original features and is approached by way
there is the potential to of a long tree-lined
create a main suite in the drive, with secure
attic. 4 beds, 2 showers, gated access. 4 suites,
WC, landing, balcony, kitchen, 3 receps,
kitchen/breakfast room, billiards room,
3 receps, study, entrance shower, kitchenette,
hall, boiler, stores, WC, sauna, study, utility,
workshop, rear garden triple garage, stores,
with lawns and mature large garden, wood,
trees. £699,500; Fine & paddock, lake, 13.9
Country (01780- acres. £995,000; Stags
750200). (01803-865454).

Cheshire: Faulkners
▲

Farm, Wilmslow. A small

country estate with a
long drive, extensive
outbuildings and a
separate cottage. Main
suite with dressing room,
3 further suites, open-
plan kitchen/breakfast/
family room, sitting
room, utility/side hall,
galleried dining hall,
WC/cloakroom, office,
orangery with glass-
topped well, drawing
room, 3-bed cottage,
detached garage with
storage/potential
office or studio above,
outbuilding, gardens, ▲ Somerset: Cleeve Hill House, Midford, Bath. There are 2 gated private
paddock, approx. drives to this Grade II Georgian house in a pretty village close to Bath, with
11.3 acres. £6.25m; fine views of the surrounding hills. 2 suites, 5/6 further beds, family bath,
Jackson-Stops (01625- shower, kitchen, 3 receps, study, utility, WC, landscaped gardens, car port,
540340). greenhouse, 1.1 acres. £2.25m; Knight Frank (01225-325994).

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

34 Marketplace

THE WEEK 10 July 2021 To advertise here please email classified@theweek.co.uk

or call Henry Haselock 020 3890 3900

What the experts recommend
The new crisis facing UK restaurants
Britain’s restaurants reopened after the
pandemic expecting to go full throttle,
thanks to soaring demand from customers.
But the sector now finds itself in a new
crisis, said Eshe Nelson in The New York
Times – caused by “a dearth of hospitality
workers”. With an estimated 188,000
hospitality jobs unfilled, some restaurants
have been forced to close on particular
days, or suspend lunch service altogether.
“It’s becoming impossible,” said Mauro
Sanna, owner of Italian chain Olivo. “I
thought the Covid crisis was tough, but
this one is much tougher because I can’t do
anything about it.” The problem is partly
down to Brexit, which has made it harder
for EU citizens to come to work in Britain,
said Clea Skopeliti in The Independent.
But it is also down to Covid-19: when the
crisis started, many foreign nationals went
home, and have not yet returned, while a
large number of British hospitality workers
took jobs in other sectors – and found they
preferred it in their new field. “They get a
better work-life balance and don’t want to
be breaking their neck for a pittance any
more,” said the head of one hotel chain.
A plastic-free picnic surprise
Although we can now meet indoors, it
looks like picnics are going to be all the
rage again this summer, says Richard
Godwin in The Times. So how to make
sure you are “the envy of the rug-
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Be “the envy of the rug-spreading classes”
spreading classes?” Obviously, you want
your picnic to look hassle free; you might
also want it to be free of the plastic waste
that goes hand in hand with modern
picnics. To tick both boxes, food writer
Shivi Ramoutar suggests preparing a “park
loaf” – inspired by the Provençal pan
bagnat (“a salade Niçoise in a baguette”).
Buy a round loaf (whether a fancy
sourdough or a “cob from Tesco Metro”),
slice off the lid, and scoop out the doughy
insides. Then “pack your entire picnic
inside the crust”. Start with mayonnaise
and perhaps pesto too; next, add some
grilled vegetables, followed by slices of
mozzarella, and salami or Parma ham.
35
Finally, add salad items – rocket leaves,
basil, tomatoes, etc. Once the contents are
almost spilling out of the top, replace the
lid and wrap the loaf tightly: Ramoutar
recommends using tinfoil, then tying a
tea towel around it and twisting it super-
tightly. Do this, she says, a couple of
hours before you plan to eat it, to give the
contents a chance to marinate. “When you
take it to the park and slice it open, it’s a
real moment. No one is expecting all those
lovely layers to be there.”
The ultimate no-churn ice cream
Homemade ice cream is the ultimate
summer pud, says Lucy Battersby in
Waitrose & Partners Food. And you don’t
need an ice-cream maker. To make an
“endlessly versatile” no-churn vanilla ice
cream, simply put 600ml of whipping
cream in a bowl along with a 397g can of
condensed milk, 2 tablespoons of vanilla
bean paste (or vanilla extract if you’re not
making plain vanilla), and a pinch of salt.
Whisk it all with electric beaters until soft
peaks form (about 5-6 minutes), and then
spoon the mixture into a freezer-proof
container and freeze for at least five hours.
If you want to make it into a raspberry
ripple, add two layers of sieved raspberries
while you are putting the mix into the
container, and then draw a knife through
the ice cream to marble the ingredients.
Alternatively, “try swirling through lemon
curd or ready-made salted caramel”.

Tomato and fennel fish stew with garlic and oregano bread
Just because you’re self-catering in a camper van doesn’t mean you can’t eat well, say Claire Thomson and Matt Williamson in their
new book. This fish stew is simple and delicious. Look out for firm, white, locally caught fish at the fishmongers or fish counter
(if you are near the sea, ask the fishmonger’s advice). Serve it with oregano garlic bread, which you can wrap in foil and either
toast in the fire if you’re having one, or warm through in a dry pan over a moderate-low heat.

Serves 4 3 tbsp good olive oil, plus more to serve 1 small onion, finely chopped or sliced 3 celery stalks, finely chopped or sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely sliced a pinch of dried chilli flakes (optional), plus more to taste a big pinch of salt, plus more to taste
2 tsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed 1 tsp dried oregano ½ a can of chopped tomatoes, or about 1 cupful of chopped fresh tomato
700ml fish or vegetable stock, or water 700g firm white fish, cut into bite-size pieces juice and finely grated zest of 1 lemon
black pepper for the garlic and oregano bread: 3 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste 2 tsp dried oregano 100g butter, softened
(about 7 tbsp) 1 large baguette, slashed at 3cm intervals

• Heat the olive oil in a wide, shallow pan over tomatoes to the onion and celery in the pan
a moderate heat. Add the onion, celery and and continue to cook for another couple of
garlic, and the chilli flakes (if using). Season minutes, until rich and thick. Add the stock or
well with the big pinch of salt and some black water and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down
pepper and cook for 10 minutes, until soft and to a simmer and add the fish, then cover with a
fragrant. lid and simmer until the fish is opaque and just
• While that’s cooking, prepare the garlic cooked through – 5-7 minutes should do,
bread. Mash the crushed garlic and the oregano depending on the size and thickness of the fish.
into the butter and season with salt and pepper. • Add the lemon zest and check the seasoning,
Use the mixture to butter the slashed bread. adjusting with lemon juice and more salt,
Wrap it in foil and place it on a heat source (in pepper and chilli flakes accordingly.
the embers of your campfire or in a dry pan) to • To serve, ladle the stew into bowls with
allow it to warm through and melt the butter. plenty of the sauce and serve with the garlic
• Add the fennel seeds, oregano and chopped bread alongside.

Taken from Camper Van Cooking by Claire Thomson and Matt Williamson, published by Quadrille at £20.
To buy from The Week Bookshop for £16.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

36 LEISURE Consumer
New cars: what the critics say
The Daily Telegraph
Toyota’s Supras have
always been “big beasts”:
the last one was “defined
by its big, gutsy 3.0-litre,
six-cylinder engine”. Now,
there is a new model, but
with only four cylinders,
it doesn’t exactly fit the
“Supra mould”. Instead,
Toyota GR Supra 2.0 it finds itself in “the
from £46,010 lighter, nimbler sports
car territory” already
dominated by talented
rivals such as the Porsche
Cayman and Alpine A110.
Can it compete?
Autocar
It has price on its
side. Sports cars in the
£40,000-£50,000 bracket
are rare. With its smaller
engine, the Supra is slower
than its predecessor. But
for the price, it is “on the
money”. Inside, the car
is little changed: it feels
snug and expensive, with
a slick 8.8in touchscreen
infotainment system; the
seats are lighter and softer
– but for comfort and
support, they are still no
match for the Porsche’s.
Top Gear
This is objectively a better
car to drive than the Supra
3.0. It is 100kg lighter
than its predecessor, and
enjoys all the byproducts
of that; it’s sharper, and
more resolved and cheaper
to buy and run. But these
changes make the car
“a bit of an enigma”. It
can do 0-62mph in an
impressive 5.2 seconds,
and it handles like a
dream, but to achieve that,
it has swapped out the
muscle that was its USP.

The best… outdoor pizza ovens

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that benefits from superb sleek wood-fired oven has the
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painless and it is simple surface large enough to bake
b
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gozney.com). (£730; thepizzaovenshop.com).

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Ooni Karu 12 A g greatt all-rounder in
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ti g
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the mid range, the Karu 12 can be used it on anny surface; so heaats upp
with three types of fuel: and it ddelivers quickly. Itt should
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w
up quickly to the to
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SOURCES: T3/THE
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gas barbecue (£449;
(£299; uk.ooni.com). comm). thefirrepod.com).

Tips of the week… And ffor those ho Wh t find… pick-your-

camping for beginners
● If you like to bed down early, set up camp
in the “family zone” if there is one. There’s
less chance of late-night carousing.
● Buy a bigger tent than you need. If it says
it “sleeps four comfortably”, it will probably
only hold three at a push.
● When pitching the tent, face the opening
away from the prevailing wind to avoid
flapping at night. Be aware that if you are
close to water, there may be mosquitoes.
● Invest in a good camping mattress (avoid
blow-up beds) and a decent chair. The
Trekology Yizi Go foldable camping chair
(£43.99, amazon.co.uk) is a favourite among
seasoned campers.
● If the prospect of squatting in the nettles
is a camping deal-breaker, consider
investing in a “privacy tent”. Wet wipes are
always useful (biodegradable, of course).
● Make life simpler by bringing a pre-
cooked dinner for the first day. Camping
cookers that can be fuelled with sticks and
twigs are better than disposable barbecues.
SOURCE: THE SUNDAY TIMES
have everything…
If you can’t find room in your bag for your
reusable water bottle, Fendi has the
solution. They sell a bottle that comes with
a logo-emblazoned woven raffia case,
which has an adjustable, detachable
shoulder strap.
from £490; net-a-porter.com
SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES
own farms near cities
Run by the same family since 1938,
Parkside Farm in Enfield has a pick-your-
own area of nearly 20 hectares. There’s a
good range of fruit and veg alongside a
farm shop (parksidefarmpyo.co.uk).
There are lots of activities to choose from
at Craigie’s Farm in Edinburgh, including
feeding the animals and a new farm-
themed play area for kids (craigies.co.uk).
Medley Manor Farm is just a short walk
from central Oxford. As well as picking your
own, you can enjoy fruit baked into cakes at
the farm’s café (medleymanorfarm.co.uk).
With lovely picnic areas and day fishing,
Woore Fruit Farm, near Crewe, has an
abundance of fruit to pick in the summer,
and pumpkins in autumn (bigbarn.co.uk).
On the outskirts of St Albans, Hawkswick
Lodge Farm is a small, family-run farm
specialising in soft fruit. Although the
opening has been delayed until 3 July, the
farm says that this year, the berries should
taste extra sweet (hawkswickfruit.co.uk).
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 Obituary
The hawk who persuaded George Bush to invade Iraq
Donald Henry Kissinger once
Rumsfeld described Donald
1932-2021 Rumsfeld as the most
ruthless man he had
ever met. Rumsfeld was also one of the
most consequential “foreign policy
actors” of his generation, said The Times
– for it was he, backed by a close-knit
group of officials, who persuaded George
W. Bush to respond to the 9/11 attacks by
invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds
of thousands of people died or were
maimed as a result of those conflicts. And
20 years on, their aftershocks are still
being felt. The war in Afghanistan became
a quagmire from which US troops are
only now withdrawing, leaving behind
not a rebuilt nation, but one that seems
ripe for renewed takeover by Islamist
extremists. (Rumsfeld did not believe
in nation-building: It’s “not our broken
society to fix”, he said.) Iraq, meanwhile,
“has known no stability since the invasion
of 2003”. It remains a breeding ground Rumsfeld: offered no mea culpas
for terrorism, and was the crucible of
Islamic State – which has “wreaked havoc across the region”, and
inspired countless jihadist attacks in the West. Yet unlike Robert
McNamara, the defence secretary who took the US into its war
in Vietnam, Rumsfeld offered no mea culpas, said The New York
Times. On the contrary, as recently as 2018 he was still insisting
that the invasion of Iraq – which cost the US $700bn and 4,400
American lives – had “created a
more stable and secure world”.
“Rumsfeld pushed so hard for the
Donald Rumsfeld was born in Star Wars missile defence programme
Illinois in 1932, the son of an
estate agent and a housewife. he was nicknamed
From high school, he won a
scholarship to Princeton, then enlisted in the navy. He became
a pilot, and an All-Navy wrestling champion. His mind was
set, however, on a career in politics. In 1957, he moved to
Washington where he worked for two Republican congressmen.
Five years later, he was elected to the House himself. A handsome
man who “radiated confidence”, he served as Richard Nixon’s
ambassador to Nato, before becoming defence secretary under
Gerald Ford in 1975. At 43, “Rummy” was the youngest man
ever to hold the post, said The Daily Telegraph. In that role,
he started to emerge as a leading warrior of the Cold War,
exaggerating the Soviet military threat in order to increase the
US defence budget. When Jimmy Carter defeated Ford in the
presidential election in 1976, Rumsfeld went off to make a
fortune in the private sector – in pharmaceuticals and other
industries. However, he continued to hold part-time public posts.
He served as a Middle Eastern envoy for President Reagan, in
which role he met Saddam Hussein, and was briefed on his use
of chemical weapons; he also pushed so hard for the Star Wars
missile defence programme he was nicknamed Darth Rumsfeld.
In January 2001, he returned to politics as George W. Bush’s
defence secretary. On the morning of 11 September, he was at the
Pentagon when it was struck by American Airlines flight 77, and
was one of the first at the crash site. After briefly helping with the
rescue effort, he rushed to the Command Centre to start preparing terrorists seeking WMDs: “As we know, there are known
the US’s response. The US-led offensive to oust the brutally
repressive Taliban regime – which had harboured Osama bin
Laden and al-Qa’eda – began within a month, but from the
outset, Rumsfeld, vice-president Dick Cheney and other hawks
were determined to use the attack as a pretext for removing
Saddam, too. Although there was no hard evidence to support
either claim, Rumsfeld insisted that Saddam had links to
37
al-Qa’eda and was developing weapons
of mass destruction. The US, he argued,
needed to strike pre-emptively against
such threats (a strategy later dubbed the
Bush Doctrine). “The best and in some
cases the only defence is a good offence,”
he said.
US generals argued that half a million
troops would be needed for the invasion
of Iraq in March 2003; Rumsfeld
overruled them, saying around 140,000
would suffice. He was right at first, said
The Times. Owing to the success of a
“shock and awe” bombing campaign,
US-led forces reached Baghdad in only
three weeks – but the idea (promoted by
prominent Iraqis in exile such as Ahmed
Chalabi) that Iraqi troops would defect to
the US, and that civilians would welcome
the invaders as liberators, proved entirely
false. Instead, coalition troops found
themselves battling a fierce Sunni
insurgency, one that was fuelled by
Washington’s decision to disband
Saddam’s largely Sunni army. This left 300,000 men jobless,
many of whom went on to form, or fight for, Islamic State.
Around the same time, a vicious sectarian war broke out.
Saddam was captured and executed, but there was no sign of any
WMDs. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,”
was Rumsfeld’s famous
response. His take on the looting
of Baghdad had been similarly
pithy: “Stuff happens.” With
no viable plan in place for the
Darth Rumsfeld” aftermath of the invasion, the
conflict dragged on, and
casualties mounted; then in 2004, shocking evidence emerged
of Iraqi prisoners being brutally mistreated by poorly trained US
staff at the Abu Ghraib detention centre. This added to growing
concern about the detention of terrorist suspects from Afghanistan
at “black site” centres, and at Guantánamo Bay. Rights groups
claimed the US’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” amounted
to torture. “I stand for eight to ten hours a day. Why is standing
limited to four hours?” wrote Rumsfeld, in one of the terse
memos for which he was famous (they were known as
“snowflakes”, because they arrived in such a flurry). In the wake
of the Abu Ghraib scandal, he offered to resign. Bush kept him
on, but support for the war continued to ebb away, even among
senior Republicans.
In 2006, the Army Times declared that “Rumsfeld has lost
credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with
Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and
his ability to lead is compromised.” A few days later, voters gave
the Bush administration a “drubbing” in mid-term elections, said
The Guardian. “Rumsfeld was immediately sacked, and largely
disappeared from public life.” In 2011, he published a memoir, in
which he defended his record and castigated his critics. He called
it Known and Unknown, after a peculiar speech he had given in
2002, in response to a question about links between Saddam and
knowns, there are things we know we know,” he said. “We also
know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there
are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown
unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” In 2007, he
established the Rumsfeld Foundation to help promote leadership
and public service, and to support veterans. He is survived by
Joyce, his wife of 66 years, and their three children.
10 July 2020 THE WEEK
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 CITY 39
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
GlaxoSmithKline: Elliott versus Emma
“Aren’t activist investors meant to sound
angry,” asked Nils Pratley in The Guardian.
Last week, Paul Singer’s US hedge fund
Elliott Management, an activist investor
with designs on GlaxoSmithKline, finally Seven days in the
emerged from the shadows after weeks of
sabre-rattling. Yet “vast chunks” of its Square Mile
17-page open letter to GSK’s board The UK Government’s fiscal watchdog
“comprised mild statements of the bleedin’ published its annual report on budget
obvious”. The group’s shares have under- risks. It noted that the fiscal impact of
performed “shockingly”, and the business a one-percentage-point rise in interest
has spent too little on R&D for years. Well, rates would be six times greater than it
yes. But it’s precisely these ailments that was in 2007, at the start of the financial
CEO Emma Walmsley’s strategic plan – to demerge the consumer healthcare division crisis. It also said spending on pensions
will cost an extra £3bn, under the “triple
from pharmaceuticals – is intended to address. And it’s a plan Elliott’s letter describes as
lock” guarantee, due to the exceptional
“wise”. The real meat of the letter is its attack on the current GSK leadership, said Aimee post-Covid bounceback in wages. There
Donnellan on Reuters Breakingviews. It calls for a new boss for the “New GSK” core were signs the housing market may be
pharma business. “That’s effectively asking Walmsley (above) to reapply for the job she cooling after months of price rises. The
already has.” With a sub-5% stake, Elliott’s firepower is limited. Meanwhile Walmsley’s average selling prices dipped 0.5% in
defences would be bolstered if GSK’s HIV treatments take off and its pipeline of drugs June according to the Halifax, taking
including respiratory and meningitis vaccines become blockbusters. Let battle commence. the year-on-year rise to 8.8%.
Nexperia, a Dutch business owned by
Amazon: life after Jeff Chinese electronics company Wingtech,
What’s the future for Amazon after Bezos? The founder stepped back after 27 years as acquired Newport Wafer Fab’s factory in
CEO this week – handing over the keys to Andrew Jassy (see page 41) – with his grand South Wales, the UK’s biggest microchip
vision for “the everything store” fully realised, said Dealbook in The New York Times. factory, for £65m. Sainsbury’s revised its
profits guidance upwards after better
Can the firm’s phenomenal growth continue from here? “Taking risks is harder for new
than expected sales, but boss Simon
leaders.” And the regulatory push to rein in Amazon will only get “more powerful”. Yet Roberts brushed off growing speculation
there are also good reasons to think Amazon’s dominance can continue for decades, said that it will be the next big takeover
Matthew Lynn in The Daily Telegraph. From Apple to Microsoft and IBM, the tech target. Deloitte announced that more
giants of recent decades have all outgrown their founders many times over – and so can than a quarter of its secretarial staff
Amazon. There remain clear opportunities– from real estate to medical services and would be made redundant as part of
groceries – and that’s before it buys anything. “Netflix or Spotify would be easy a post-pandemic shake-up.
acquisitions for a post-Bezos Amazon, and both would add hugely to its overall muscle.” Hospitality sector shares surged on
And even if regulators break it up, each “Baby Amazon” – retailing, streaming and cloud Monday as Boris Johnson announced
computing – would be “a giant in its own right”. Amazon might be “scarily dominant”, the scrapping of almost all Covid-19
but even without its founding genius at the helm, it is only just “getting started”. restrictions on 19 July. Money transfer
service Wise said it expected to be
Vauxhall: going electric investigated over alleged money
laundering in Brazil, but this didn’t derail
Keeping the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port open was “no tap in”, said Alistair its successful floatation on the London
Osborne in The Times. First came Brexit turmoil; then the merger between Vauxhall’s Stock Exchange on Wednesday – the
French owner PSA with Fiat Chrysler to form Stellantis; then the pandemic; then Boris biggest IPO by a tech firm in London.
Johnson’s ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. “So, it’s a victory all round that Shares in Didi, a Chinese ride-hailing app
after a three-way deal between Stellantis, the unions and the Government, the Cheshire newly listed in New York, slumped on
plant will become Britain’s first large factory dedicated to electric vehicles.” It’s certainly fears of a Chinese regulatory backlash.
good news after months of threats from the Franco-Italian owners to jettison Ellesmere,
said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. But there’s a big question mark over the
(rumoured) £35m government contribution. Unlike at Nissan in Sunderland – where the
case for a large subsidy has been well made – Stellantis has no plans to build a battery E-sports star
gigafactory in Cheshire. So you have to ask why the Government is spending taxpayers’ “Parents of teenage gamers, look away
cash – and whether “this really secures the plant’s future or if it’s just a short-term fix”. now,” said Alistair Osborne in The
Times. Europe’s top-ranked Fortnite
Robinhood: buyer beware player Tai Starcic, a 16-year-old
The “popular but controversial” US stock-trading app Robinhood “knows the value of Slovenian better known as TaySon, has
striking while the iron is hot”, said Lex in the FT. A day after it agreed $70m to settle just been sold to a Saudi Arabian
charges that it misled customers, the start-up published paperwork for its IPO – one of e-sports team for a record transfer fee
of $115,000. The deal follows his third
the year’s most eagerly anticipated. The numbers are eye-catching. Revenues more than triumph at the Fortnite Champion Series
tripled to $958m last year, and topped $522m in the first quarter of 2021. The boom in All-Star Showdown, where he picked up
viral meme-stocks and cryptotrading has seen customers double to 18 million in a year. $150,000 in prize-money. The outfit
Even so, the $40bn target valuation looks wildly overblown, said Robert Cyran and Gina selling the teen is Guild Esports, the first
Chon on Reuters Breakingviews. Most of Robinhood’s revenues come from payment-for- e-sports franchise to list on the London
order flows (earning a fee for sending retail customer trades to market-making firms). Stock Exchange in a £41m floatation last
These, like cryptocurrency trading fees, are highly vulnerable to regulatory intervention October. Its co-owner happens to be one
and further legal turmoil. Robinhood is trying hard “to deflect any arrows that come its David Beckham. So now you know who
way” by building a legal team that includes ex-SEC bigwigs. “With so much of its to blame “when the kids won’t go to bed
and say they’ve got to practise”.
valuation riding on speculation, there’s only so much fortifying it can do.”

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

40 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: the battle for Morrisons
A vote of confidence in Britain? Or an unsavoury scramble by “private equity vultures”?
“You wait 122 years for a bidder then
three arrive at once,” said Bryce Elder
in the FT. The UK’s fourth-biggest
supermarket chain, Wm Morrison,
stunned the City last weekend by
recommending to shareholders a 254p-a-
share takeover – valuing the enterprise
at £9.5bn – from US private equity firm
Fortress, backed by Koch Industries and
a Canadian pension fund. Apollo Global
Management, another US buyout
specialist, immediately confirmed that
it is working on a rival offer. And the
original Yankee suitor rejected last
month at 230p, Clayton Dubilier & Rice, Sir Ken Morrison: spinning in his grave?
has until 17 July to come back with an
improved bid. This is a resounding “vote of confidence in UK
plc”, said The Sunday Times. The sell-off might cause “shudders”
to some. But the board has had “reassurance from Fortress that
this is no asset-stripping operation or land grab, and that the new
owners will be good stewards”. It should be warmly welcomed.
What nonsense, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. The “speed or fifth bidder will emerge, said James Moore in The Independent.
and naivety” with which the retailer’s “feeble” board approved
Fortress’s bid – and believed their vague, unenforceable promises
– is “deeply disturbing”. Morrisons has a special place in British
life: its “unique ownership model” means it has long supply
chains “stretching from farm and fishing fleet to table”. And even
by the standards of private equity, the “marauding buccaneers”
out to carve up the supermarket – and
no doubt flog off its large property
portfolio – are unsavoury. Fortress’s
backer SoftBank has failed to keep
the promises made when buying British
chip giant Arm. Koch Industries is one
of the US’s most “notorious polluting
companies and a backer of eccentric far-
right causes”. Apollo is tainted by links
to Jeffrey Epstein. The idea that these
are the right folk to take on the “rich
legacy” of the socially-conscious Sir Ken
Morrison is “risible”, said Ben Marlow
in The Daily Telegraph. The
Government must scrutinise the plan
carefully; shareholders should block it.
It’s clear why Morrisons is popular, said Lex in the FT. Years of
Brexit worries have left UK stocks looking cheap, and the grocer
offers utility-like cash generation plus significant freehold
property, logistics and manufacturing assets that should be easier
to exploit under private ownership. There’s speculation a fourth
“And that Amazon could ultimately end up squashing the lot of
them.” This makes the board’s haste in accepting the Fortress
offer look idiotic. Sir Ken Morrison will certainly be spinning in
his grave at the prospect of “private equity vultures” gobbling up
his business. But “goodness only knows how he would respond
to the limp capitulation of the people now at the helm”.

Inflation worries: what the experts think Simple tax tips

● Back to the 70s?
Markets have been
abuzz with talk of
rising inflation for
months – and the
clamour is getting
louder, said Russell
Lynch in The Daily
Telegraph. Prices in the
world’s 38 advanced
(OECD) economies
are now rising at the Gold: a haven?
fastest pace since
2008: inflation averaged 3.8% in May, up
from 3.3% in April. In the US, consumer
inflation is already 5%. Here, UK services
(accounting for 80% of the economy) are
raising prices at the fastest rate in 25 years. Given the paltry yields on financial
The Bank of England Governor Andrew
Bailey and the departing chief economist
Andy Haldane clashed publicly last week
over inflation risks. The former is
sanguine; the latter very worried. He
predicts 4% inflation by Christmas, up
from 2.1% now.
● Going for gold
What can investors do to prepare for an
era of higher inflation? Diversification is
the key, said Michelle McGagh on
Citywire. Commodities – such as oil,
crops and metals – typically benefit in
inflationary times. But commodities are
already having an “incredible run” (copper not cheap, but “with inflation it tends to
is at an all-time high; oil has recovered to a become even less cheap. This is not a time
three-year high) and could fall back as
pandemic bottlenecks
ease. Inflation is bad
news for bonds, since it
erodes the value of your
investment while also
making the interest
payments you earn less
valuable. Inflation-
linked bonds are one
solution. But “while
they offer protection
on one hand, they are
very expensive, so you
have to be confident about where you
believe inflation is heading”.
● Value over growth
securities, it makes sense to have exposure
to gold and commodities, adding “genuine
diversification”, agreed John Plender in the
FT. In addition, long-term investors should
check whether their pension holdings
include assets that “respond robustly” to
inflation, such as property or infrastruct-
ure, and should minimise their exposure to
fixed-income bonds. Equities are a better
hedge against inflation than bonds, and
an inflationary background tends to
strengthen the case for a “value investing”
approach (focusing on cheaply valued
stocks) rather than “growth” stocks.
Finally, residential property is definitely
to be out of the property market.”
Tax rules are “devilishly complex,”
– even the financially literate often
overlook some simple ways of saving
tax, says Mike Warburton in The Daily
Telegraph. Here are five:
If your spouse or civil partner is a basic-
rate taxpayer and you don’t pay tax (or
vice versa), you can transfer £1,260 of
your personal allowance to them,
saving your household £252. What’s
more, this can be backdated to any tax
year from 2017-18 onwards.
Everyone has an annual £12,300 capital
gains tax allowance. Consider
transferring shares (or other assets) to
your spouse or civil partner before sale
to ensure their allowance isn’t wasted.
You don’t have to be earning anything
to make pension contributions of up to
£2,880 a year, gaining a further £720
from HMRC. This operates well for non-
working spouses.
If you’ve been working from home
during the pandemic, you can claim an
allowance of either the actual costs, or
a flat rate of £6 a week without evidence
(applies to 2020-21 and the current year).
If you’re concerned about inheritance
tax, don’t forget you can make
unlimited payments free of IHT so long
as they are regular and out of surplus
income. This is in addition to the £3,000
annual allowance and seven-year
lifetime gift rule.

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 Commentators CITY 41
The global economy is on track for a “slow-motion train wreck”,
says Nouriel Roubini. Years of ultra-loose fiscal and monetary City profiles
A slow train policies have pumped up asset and credit bubbles. Warning signs
are now flashing across financial markets and asset classes giddy Andrew Jassy

wreck is with “irrational exuberance”. And there’s a slew of negative

supply shocks that could easily precipitate the slump. However,
Amazon’s second-ever CEO,
who started his new job on

coming few yet understand how grave the threat is and how powerless
policymakers will be to cope with it. Put simply, we are facing
Monday, made a powerful
first impression on Jeff
Bezos soon after joining the
Nouriel Roubini the “worst of the stagflationary 1970s” (inflation and recession upstart bookseller fresh from
at the same time) combined with the multiple debt crises of the Harvard Business School in
Project Syndicate 2007-2010 period. Because debt levels are far higher than in the 1997. During a game of
1970s, central banks will be put in an “impossible” position. “broomball” – a blend of
lacrosse and football
They can raise rates and risk a gigantic debt crisis and depression.
invented by an Amazon
Or they can stay loose, and risk double-digit inflation and staffer – the newcomer Jassy
“deep stagflation”. They’ll be damned either way, since many whacked the boss over the
governments will be semi-insolvent and “unable to bail out banks, head with a kayak paddle.
corporations and households”. This disaster is approaching. “The Bezos, 57, not only forgave
question is not if, but when.” Jassy, 53, but “quickly and
repeatedly promoted” the
Half a year into Brexit proper, the worst “prophecies of short- intensely competitive New
term disaster” have failed to materialise, says the FT. Kent did not Yorker, said Rupert Neate

Brexit: the six- seize up with lorries; pharmacy shelves did not empty; bankers
failed to “decamp in their tens of thousands”. But if “disruption
and Sarah Butler in The
Guardian. His faith paid off.

month report
As Bezos’s “intellectual
has not been visible” – partly masked by the pandemic – it has sparring partner”, Jassy first
been significant and ominous. Nearly a third of British companies suggested expanding from
card trading with the EU have seen business fall or stop altogether. All
the early evidence confirms that “erecting barriers with the UK’s
books into CDs and DVDs,
and later proposed the
Editorial nearest and largest market” will damage long-term growth. And company’s crucial move into
although financial services have lost less than feared, the UK is no cloud storage. Amazon Web
Financial Times longer pushing for a crucial equivalence deal, since it’s clear the Services, Jassy’s fiefdom, is
now the company’s “most
EU will not grant it. Alas, “getting Brexit done” has brought not
reliable source of profit”.
a “cathartic reset”, but further tensions and economic decoupling
that must be reversed – via further deals on facilitation and Jensen Huang
market access – if all this damage is to be limited. The current
Government, “tightly lashed to the Brexit mast”, has little interest
in addressing this. Let’s hope future ones will be “more willing”.

The received wisdom about the pandemic is that older people

have paid with their health while the young have suffered
Older workers economically, says James Moore. But research from the
Resolution Foundation suggests that the economic pain has
must not be increasingly been shared across age groups. Older employees, for
example, are finding it much harder to get off furlough and back
forgotten to work. Of all UK workers on furlough in February, 26% of
those aged 55-64 were still on full furlough in May, against just
James Moore 6% of those aged 35-44 and 16% of those aged 18-34. The
winding down of support now leaves older workers “in the firing
The Independent line” for redundancy. So far, the Government has focused on
helping younger workers, with initiatives like the Kickstarter
The billionaire boss of chip-
scheme. Now it should focus on older people, starting with a one-
maker Nvidia credits an early
month extension of furlough, buying time to shape a broader stint working in a diner with
policy response. It won’t be cheap, but it makes sense politically. giving him the confidence to
Older people tend to be conservative, but “that might change if start a business. Jensen
they feel abandoned. And right now they are being abandoned.” Huang, a Taiwanese-
American, was a gifted but
The suit and tie are “fast becoming endangered species in the shy child, says Jamie
corporate world” – their disappearance accelerated by the Nimmo in The Sunday
In praise pandemic, says Ben Wright. Over numberless Zoom calls with
business folk and bankers, I can recall only a handful in
Times. He leapfrogged two
years at school, but “I only

of the suit traditional business attire, while many had “regressed to polo
shirts and even T-shirts”. Plenty of men will say: good riddance.
had a few friends”, he says.
“We were all in the same

and tie But they should be careful what they wish for: “we discard the
tried-and-tested combo” at our peril. Sticking to suits saves male
three clubs: the maths club,
the computer club and the
science club.” It was a job at
Ben Wright office workers daily “bewildering” debate over what to wear. It Denny’s, the US diner chain,
also nullifies the faintly ludicrous displays of supposedly “non- that helped him become less
© WINNI WINTERMEYER/REDUX/EYEVINE

The Daily Telegraph conformist” power-play dress codes, such as those adopted by introverted. “It was a great
hedge fund managers (chinos, button-down shirts and armless way to get me out,” he says.
And it was at a branch of
fleeces) or tech entrepreneurs (compulsory white trainers). Most
Denny’s, on his 30th birthday
importantly, the rise of casual dressing risks further blurring the in 1993, that Huang and
necessary boundary between being on and off duty. If you’re friends “cooked up” the idea
always working from home, you “never get to leave the office. of Nvidia – now an industry
And if you’re always casual, you never get to fully relax. The best giant valued at $500bn.
thing about a suit may be that you can take it off.”

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

42 Marketplace

CONSIGNING NOW
for our auction of
Jewellery, Watches and Objects of Vertu
to be held at our Mayfair Saleroom

on Tuesday 14th September

Closing for entries 5th August

Recent prices at auction have been

extremely high so do take advantage of
the current strength of the market to sell
All enquiries please contact
Frances Noble or Rachel Bailey
on 020 7016 1700
or email jewellery@dnw.co.uk

An early 20th century Colombian emerald

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Estimate: £5,000-£7,000
To be included in 14th September sale

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 Shares CITY 43

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
Dixons Carphone Herald Investment Trust JP Morgan Energean
The Times The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph
Online electrical equipment Shares in the tech-focused trust The diversified US giant offers 1,000

sales doubled in the pandemic have risen 80% in two years investment banking, asset and 950
as customers upgraded their thanks to “extraordinary” wealth management. Solid,
home technology. Profits fund manager Katie Potts. growing and gaining share in 900
swung to £33m after last year’s Herald’s well-diversified a fragmented market. Profit-
850
£140m loss. The dividend has portfolio majors on small UK ability is “up there with the
been restored. Buy. 130.25p. firms. Undeservedly cheap. best” – 14% last year despite 800
Buy. £21.80. the pandemic. Buy. $154.14. Director
750
Entain sells 700,000
The Sunday Times James Latham Speedy Hire 700
The online gaming firm has Investors Chronicle The Times Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
rebranded and is aiming for After early pandemic Speedy provides drills,

SOURCE: INVESTORS CHRONICLE

all revenues to come from
regulated markets. Given
shares are up 44% since
MGM’s rebuffed January bid,
there’s hope for a better offer.
Jefferies names a £23.35 target
price. Buy. £17.97.
disruption, the timber products
distributor has staged a strong
recovery. Margins remain
elevated with short supply and
strong demand from the
construction and housebuilding
sectors. Buy. £11.31.
scaffolding, picks, shovels and Finance chief Panos Benos has
sold £5.6m-worth of shares in
the like to a wide customer the oil and gas firm. Shares
base. Improving ESG have recovered to the January
credentials should put it in 2020 level, and production is
good stead to benefit from building, but operating losses
an infrastructure-driven have increased by a third and
debt is high.
construction boom. Buy. 70p.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Ashtead Group
The Times
The equipment-rental firm
provided solar-powered light
towers, electric bikes and other
carbon-free kit for the G7
summit in Cornwall. Shares
are punchy, but it’s well set to
benefit from the US infrastruc-
ture splurge. Hold. £54.04.
Burberry
The Sunday Telegraph
The departure of CEO Marco
Gobbetti has wiped £1bn off
the luxury house’s value.
Finding a new CEO to partner
creative chief Riccardo Tisci
amid Burberry’s “partially
successful” turnaround could
take time. Sell. £20.49.
Crest Nicholson
The Daily Telegraph
Demand for good quality
homes outstripping supply
should continue to drive the
housebuilder’s sales, prices and
profits. Margins currently lag
behind peers’, but are expected
to improve. Hold. 429.2p.
Petrofac
The Times
The oil services group is still
impacted by the SFO’s probe
into suspected bribery,
corruption and money
laundering, and is struggling to
win work. Last year’s oil price
crash didn’t help, and the order
backlog continues to fall.
Avoid. 111.1p.
Sirius Real Estate Shares tipped 12 weeks ago
The Daily Telegraph Best tip
Property firm Sirius invests Helical
in German business parks. The Times
Hammered in the first couple up 7.64% to 444.03p
of months of the pandemic, it
has recovered losses, and rental Worst tip
rates and occupancy levels are Hilton Food Group
Investors Chronicle
up. Yields a well-covered
down 1.55% to £11.44
2.9%. Hold. 112p.
Stagecoach
Investors Chronicle Market view
Passenger numbers may take
“The property market
a while to return to pre-Covid
resembles a supermarket in
levels. Meanwhile, the the early days of lockdown:
transport group has halted the shelves are bare and
capex, cut the dividend and only the dregs remain.”
negotiated covenant waivers Isabelle Fraser in The
on debt. A dilutive placing may Daily Telegraph
be necessary. Hold. 83p.

Market summary
Key numbers for investors Best and worst performing shares Following the Footsie
6 July 2021 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,200
FTSE 100 7100.88 7087.55 0.19% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 4060.82 4042.58 0.45% Intl. Cons. Airl. Gp. 186.52 +7.26
Dow Jones 34454.40 34359.47 0.28% Informa 535.60 +6.44
NASDAQ 14613.27 14502.44 0.76% JD Sports Fashion 967.40 +5.43 7,000

Nikkei 225 28643.21 28812.61 –0.59% Compass Group 1572.00 +5.26

Hang Seng 28072.86 28994.10 –3.18% Rolls-Royce Holdings 103.66 +5.15
Gold 1791.35 1780.30 0.62% FALLS 6,800
Brent Crude Oil 74.44 74.37 0.09% Ocado Group 1901.50 –7.78
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 2.97% 2.97% Evraz 586.60 –4.18
UK 10-year gilts yield 0.63 0.74 Antofagasta 1404.50 –3.04 6,600
US 10-year Treasuries 1.37 1.49 CRH (Lon) 3600.00 –2.97
UK ECONOMIC DATA Prudential 1385.50 –2.77
Latest CPI (yoy) 2.1% (May) 1.5% (Apr)
FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER
Latest RPI (yoy) 3.3% (May) 2.9% (Apr) 6,400
GCP Student Living 195.00 +19.80
Halifax house price (yoy) 8.8% (Jun) 9.5% (May) Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
Micro Focus Intl. 440.00 –19.00
6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
£1 STERLING $1.380 E1.167 ¥152.634 Source: Datastream & FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 6 July (pm)

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

44 The last word

A Cold War tragedy: the execution

of the Rosenbergs
On 19 June 1953, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair for being Soviet spies. Sixty-eight years later,
their sons are still trying to clear their mother’s name. Hadley Freeman reports

“It was a queer, sultry summer, espionage. Ethel’s brother, David

the summer they electrocuted the Greenglass, had earlier been
Rosenbergs…” So begins Sylvia arrested for the same crime.
Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar, Significantly, the Korean War –
referring to the Jewish American seen by the US as a life-or-death
couple, Julius and Ethel struggle with communism – had
Rosenberg, convicted of just begun. Senator Joseph
conspiracy to commit espionage McCarthy was warning about
and sent to the electric chair on 19 “homegrown commies”, and the
June 1953. Their execution is seen US entered a red panic. A month
by many as America’s Cold War later, Ethel too was arrested. She
nadir. The Rosenbergs are still the called Michael at home and told
only Americans ever put to death him that she had also been
in peacetime for espionage, and arrested. “So you can’t come
Ethel is the only American woman home?” he asked. “No,” she
killed by the US government for a replied. The seven-year-old
crime other than murder. screamed.

During their trial, Ethel in Julius and Ethel, like David

particular was vilified for Greenglass and his wife, Ruth,
prioritising communism over were communists. Like many
her children, and the prosecution Jews, they became interested in
insisted she was the dominant half the movement in the 1930s when
of the couple, because she was it seemed a way to fight fascism.
three years older. But questions Unlike many others, they stuck
about whether she was guilty at with it after the Soviet Union and
all have grown louder in recent “Ethel thought life without Julius would have been valueless” Germany signed a non-aggression
years, and a new biography pact, ostensibly becoming allies.
presents her in a different light. “Ethel was killed for being a wife. “These were people who grew up during the Depression,” says
She was guilty of supporting her husband,” Anne Sebba, author Sebba. “They thought they were making the world a better
of Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy, tells me. And for that, place.” David worked as a machinist at the Los Alamos atomic
the 37-year-old mother of two had five massive jolts of electricity weapons laboratory. He was arrested after being identified as part
pumped through her body. Eyewitnesses said smoke rose from of a chain passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. David admitted
her head. The killing of the Rosenbergs was so shocking it became his guilt, and his lawyer advised the best thing he could do for
part of popular culture, referenced in works by Tony Kushner and himself, and to give his wife immunity, would be to turn in
Woody Allen. The most moving cultural response was E.L. someone else. Then the Rosenbergs were arrested.
Doctorow’s 1971 novel, The Book of Daniel, which imagines the
life of the Rosenbergs’ oldest child, whom he renames Daniel. In The FBI believed Julius was a kingpin who recruited Americans
reality, the older Rosenberg child is called Michael, and his as spies and used David to pass on atomic secrets to the Russians.
younger brother is Robert. The initial allegations against Ethel were that she “had a
discussion with Julius Rosenberg
It is a bitter, rainy spring day, the and others in November 1944”,
day I interview the Rosenbergs’ “Ethel was guilty of supporting her husband. and “had a discussion with
sons. Three and seven when their For that, the mother of two had five massive Julius Rosenberg, David
parents were arrested, six and Greenglass and others in January
ten when they were killed, they
jolts of electricity pumped through her body” 1945” – in other words, she
are now known as Michael and talked to her husband and
Robert Meeropol, having taken the surname of the couple who brother. It was feeble stuff, as the FBI knew. At first, David
eventually adopted them. When their parents were arrested, testified that his sister had not been involved. However, his wife
Michael, a challenging child, acted up even more, whereas Robert said that Ethel had typed up information that David had given
withdrew into himself. This dynamic still holds true: “Robert is Julius to pass to the Soviets. David changed his story before the
more reserved and I fly off the handle,” says Michael, 78, a retired trial to corroborate his wife’s version, probably under pressure
economics professor. Patient, methodical Robert, 74, a former from Roy Cohn, the ambitious chief assistant prosecutor. This
lawyer, considers every word carefully. We are talking by video: was the key evidence against Ethel – but even with that, Myles
Robert is in Massachusetts, Michael in New York state. The Lane, the chief assistant attorney for New York’s Southern
differences between them are obvious, but so is their closeness: District, admitted privately: “The case is not strong against Mrs
since Michael’s wife, Ann, died two years ago, his brother has Rosenberg. But [to act] as a deterrent, I think it is very important
called him daily. “Rob and I are unusual siblings. We have dealt that she be convicted, too.” FBI director J. Edgar Hoover agreed.
with so many struggles, we are very enmeshed,” says Michael.
At the trial, David testified that he gave Julius details of the
The brothers’ struggles began on 17 July 1950, when their father, atomic bomb, and that Ethel was involved in their discussions.
Julius, was arrested at their New York home on suspicion of Because he gave names, David ended up serving nine years.

THE WEEK 10 July 2021

 The last word 45
Ruth was free to stay home with the – i.e. he hadn’t passed on details about
children. The Rosenbergs, who pleaded the atomic bomb.
innocent, were found guilty. Judge Irving
Kaufman carefully considered their Michael was more sceptical of the Venona
sentence. Hoover, aware of how it would papers, wondering if they were “CIA
look if the US executed a young mother, disinformation”. But in 2008 he finally
urged against the death sentence for Ethel, accepted them when Morton Sobell – who
but Cohn argued for it and won. was convicted along with the Rosenbergs
– publicly confirmed that Julius had not
Michael and Robert never saw the helped the Russians build the bomb. “What
Greenglasses again after the trial, and all he gave them was junk,” Sobell said. Of
Michael remembers of them is: “David Ethel, Sobell said, “What was she guilty
looked like a nondescript schlub and Ruth of? Of being Julius’s wife.” In 1996, David
was a cold fish. But is that true, or just a Greenglass finally admitted he had lied
nephew who wants to expose the people about his sister: “I told them the story and
who lied about my parents?” he asks. Ethel left her out of it, right? But my wife put her
herself has long been portrayed as cold. In in it. So what am I gonna do, call my wife a
reality, Sebba says, she was a devoted liar?” He added, “I frankly think my wife
mother who consulted a child therapist to did the typing, but I don’t remember.” Ruth
improve her parenting skills. But when she Robert and Michael: “we are unusual siblings” died in 2008, David in 2014.
was arrested, all the aspirations she had of
giving her boys a happy childhood imploded. At first the boys Robert launched the campaign for Ethel’s exoneration in 2015.
lived with her mother, Tessie, who resented the situation. Worse Yet her innocence raises more questions than it settles. Given she
still, they were later put in a children’s home. Eventually, Julius’s was a true believer in communism, why didn’t she join Julius in
mother, Sophie, took them in, but the boys were too much for spying? “Her main identity was as a wife and a mother,” says
their frail grandmother. None of their aunts or uncles would take Sebba, “and that’s what mattered to her.” So why didn’t Julius
them, so they were shipped around to various families. save Ethel? He could easily have given names to save her life.
“Dad’s unwillingness to rat out his fellows [was] personal,” says
For the boys’ sake, Ethel always maintained a happy front. “We Michael. “These were his friends!” Until the end, Julius believed
always had a good time on prison visits: singing, talking, enjoying they wouldn’t go to the chair. The government hoped that, too
ourselves,” says Michael. He even used to play hangman with his – but they wanted names. After Ethel was killed, the deputy
father, although he didn’t realise the irony until he was an adult. attorney general William Rogers said, “She called our bluff.”
The US government said that if Julius gave them names of
other spies, and he and Ethel The defining mystery about
confessed, their lives would Ethel is why she chose to stay
be spared. The Rosenbergs “For the boys’ sake, Ethel always maintained silent. Her letters show that
issued a statement: “By a happy front on prison visits. Michael even she was deeply in love with her
asking us to repudiate the husband, but also full of anxiety
truth of our innocence, the
used to play hangman with his father” about the boys. “Ethel thought
government admits its own life without Julius would have
doubts concerning our guilt… we will not be coerced, even under been valueless,” says Sebba. “Because her sons would never have
pain of death, to bear false witness.” On 16 June 1953, the respected her, because she would have had to name names.” Their
children were brought to New York’s Sing Sing prison to say childhoods would have been easier “if Julius had cooperated”,
goodbye to their parents. On 19 June, Ethel and Julius wrote says Robert. “He’d have been in prison and Ethel would have
their last letter to their children: “Always remember that we been released” – as with the Greenglasses. “But as an adult I
were innocent and could not wrong our conscience. We press would much rather be the child of Ethel and Julius than the child
you close and kiss you with all our strength. Lovingly, Daddy of David and Ruth Greenglass.”
and Mommy.” Just after 8pm, the Rosenbergs were executed.
Michael and Robert’s campaign for their mother’s exoneration
The boys were eventually adopted by Abel and Anne Meeropol, was struck a blow with the election of Donald Trump, whose
an older left-wing couple. They grew up in anonymity among original mentor was none other than Roy Cohn. Robert says there
loving people. Abel was a songwriter, whose biggest hit was was no point in asking Trump for help. But now the campaign is
Strange Fruit; the boys were raised on the royalties from the most starting again, and they are “optimistic” President Biden will look
famous song of the civil rights era. “Living with Abel and Anne, at it favourably. I ask why it matters now. Why not leave this in
it felt like we won the lottery,” says Michael. The boys enjoyed a the past? “It’s personal as well as political,” says Robert, emphas-
happy upbringing, telling almost no one their real surname – until ising both words. “That the US government invented evidence to
they were unmasked by the local media in 1973. They used the obtain an execution is a threat to every person in this country.”
exposure to campaign for their parents, writing a memoir and
suing the FBI and CIA for the release of documents which they The biggest question about Ethel for me relates to her sons.
believed proved their parents’ innocence. Following our interview, I end up speaking to them several more
times, partly because they are so delightful to talk to: intelligent,
In 1995, however, the Venona papers were declassified. These interesting, admirable. How did they triumph over such trauma?
were secret Soviet messages intercepted by US counterintelligence. Sebba tells me she asked the same thing of Elizabeth Phillips, the
The Rosenbergs were named. Julius, it was now clear, had child therapist consulted by Ethel before her arrest. “She told me
definitely been spying for the Soviets, codenamed him it was down to three things,” Sebba says. “She said, ‘One, they
“Antenna” and later “Liberal”. David and Ruth Greenglass have a high level of intelligence. Two, they had amazing adoptive
© WEBB CHAPPELL/GUARDIAN/EYEVINE

were also spies. But there was little about Ethel. She didn’t
have a codename. She was, the cables noted, “a devoted person”
(i.e. a communist) but “[she] does not work” (i.e. she was not
a spy). “That transcript was as close to a smoking gun as we
would get,” says Robert, “because it said Julius and Ethel
didn’t do the thing they were killed for. Ethel didn’t work and
Julius wasn’t an atomic spy, he was a military-industrial spy”
parents. But we now know how important those early years of life
are, and Ethel must have given those two boys so much in those
years that it lasted all their lives. Ethel must have been an
extremely good mother.’”
A longer version of this article appeared in The Guardian.
© Guardian News and Media Ltd

10 July 2021 THE WEEK

46 Marketplace

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 Crossword 47
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1268 This week’s winner will receive an
T
An Ettinger travel pass case and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass
E
first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 19 July. case (assorted colours), which retails
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at £105, and two Connell Guides
crossword 1268, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) (connellguides.com).

1 2 4 5 6 7 8
ACROSS DOWN
1 Comedy hits given credit (9) 2 Being bookish is rarely up 9
6 I’m a leader of Muslims (4) with IT (8)
10 Shock from having rear-end 3 Sort of car that’s the making 10 11
chopped off in aerobatics (4) of father (5)
11 Town shown by film in stereo? 4 Member of a clan merits ban
Not all of it (9) when out of order (9)
12 What helps it all run smoothly 5 Garden perhaps has pear tree 12 13
in musical? (6) finally cropped (5)
13 Charlie hating to remove a 7 Without equal and without a
garment? (8) game (9)
14 A little quiet merriment 8 Jolly little one in French
is organised around 1 May 14 15 16 17
department (6)
once (5,8) 9 Gen’s pregnant, Al’s gone
19 Mess up transport? Some missing (4) 18
may be fired (13) 15 Sounds like thoroughly
21 Most upset about Irish modern lass went for bug (9) 19
county (8) 16 NHS founder is close
24 Where farm workers may go reportedly (3) 20
for a snack (6) 17 Player on bench has position
26 Stress on pupils could be that’s material (9) 21 22 23 24 25
this (9) 18 VAT files sent causing
27 Tarmac part of unmade-up celebration (8)
avenue (4) 20 Southern Africa farmers saving
28 Garden feature stood out in vote for Chinese nationalists (6) 26 27
leaves (4) 22 Glut, say with no end of
29 Each in turn cut off needing fruit? (4)
supporter (9) 23 Incomplete puzzle in rag (5)
25 A letter opener (5)
28 29

Name
Address
Clue of the week: Despotic leader installed without a break (5, first letter P) Tel no
The Guardian, Brendan
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1266

ACROSS: 8 Sophia 9 Toodle-oo 10 Herr 11 Anticipate
12 Cinematographer 14 Knotted 16 Doyenne 19 Leonardo da Vinci
22 Strip light 24 Ritz 25 Marchesa 26 Israel
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Clue of the week: It’s not true love, just a bit of passion in the van
(6, first letter P) Solution: PHONEY (p + honey)
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10 July 2021 THE WEEK
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